


Carry On

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Learning to be loved and cared for, Libraries, Literacy and Education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2410283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feuilly moves to a new city to start over. He plans to keep his head down this time, to work an 8 to 5 job and keep to himself and settle for getting by. His hopes are modest, reasonable: He hopes to keep up on his loan payments, to get along with his coworkers, to get through another Christmas alone.  </p><p>He doesn't plan on getting sucked into a group of literacy activists who care way too much, on getting involved in trying to fix the world again, on stumbling into people who actually seem to care about him. He doesn't plan on being happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Three weeks into his new life in a new city, Feuilly had perfected the art of the coffee shop linger. On his circulation desk worker wage, he couldn't afford any more than one drink (small black coffee or hot tea), but he could make it last, sipping it slowly, continuing to sip even after it grew cold, dividing his attention between the hot drink and a glass of (free) ice water. If he purchased one drink, he figured, he could respectably stay for at least an hour, maybe two if the place wasn't too busy.

Two hours was long enough to read a few chapters of a book (even for a reader whose scores had never made it above the bold "average" line on the test reports, who had clawed himself through college with lecture notes and free homework help and countless all-nighters). Two hours was long enough that by the time Feuilly walked the three blocks back to his apartment and put away his book and packed his lunch for the next day, it was late enough that he could go to bed without feeling too pathetic.

But he started to feel awkward going to the same coffee shop three or four nights a week. Having baristas know you by name and greet you with your usual order sounds exciting, cosmopolitan--until you realize it means they _know_ you're using that dollar-sixty-five drink as an excuse for two hours of loitering.

Several times a week. Alone.

So he used one of the library computers on his lunch break to search for coffee shops in the area--and found one (named "The Cafe Musain") that was a combination used book store and independent coffee shop. Five years ago, such a place would have had Feuilly bouncing around the hallways of his dorm in search of someone with a car he could convince to make a coffee run halfway across the city. Now--and maybe it was just that he spent all day around books--he just thought, _well, browsing the shelves will be a way to fill up the time._

It was strange to be so at a loss for what to do with his hours of leisure time, when just a few weeks ago he might well have committed murder for a single hour to just _sit down_ , without being bombarded by demands and crises on all sides. Now the hours weighed heavy on him, his little slope-ceilinged apartment too quiet and echoey when he sat there alone, the neighborhood too built up for enjoyable walking. He had plenty of physical energy, after days of easy work shelving books and pulling them off the shelves again for patrons, and didn't feel right just sitting on the couch all night. But he didn't have the mental or emotional energy to really _do_ anything--to go out drinking or start a hobby or join a club or try to meet people in this city where no one knew he existed. Reading at a coffee shop all evening was somewhere in between; it was easy and familiar and didn't require much talking to people, but he could at least go to bed feeling like he'd done _something._

The Cafe Musain turned out to be full of hipsters--the kind of fake-glasses, rich-but-pretending-to-be-poor (as if threadbare clothes were some kind of exotic aesthetic), local-organic-vegan young people who grated on Feuilly's nerves, despite his best efforts to be reasonable. Still, the place was also full of books, in a sprawling layout where every time you thought you'd seen the end you turned another corner and discovered a whole room full of philosophy or Asian history or medical texts. And it did have tables throughout the whole place, so that he didn't have to conspicuously hunch over his single cup of coffee for two hours right under the barista's nose.

Feuilly gravitated toward a side room filled mostly with art books (with, inexplicably, a few shelves of fly fishing near the front). He didn't recognize most of the names--and he usually brought a book of his own to read, anyway. But he'd really enjoyed the one art history course he'd taken for gen ed, back in college (freshman spring, 8 am, Monday-Wednesday-Friday), and being surrounded by titles like _Great Artists of the Twentieth Century,_ _Light & Color,_ and _The Art of Seeing_ brought back a little of that wide-eyed, excited feeling. So he quickly fell into a pattern of spending his "evenings out" at a little round table right beside the Nineteenth-Century-Painters shelf, one of a cluster of little tables hidden at the back of the Art room.

It was a good routine, until he happened to be at The Cafe Musain on a Wednesday night.

He didn't notice the group come in until the meeting was going on right over his head. There'd been some indie-folk duo playing in the main room, and he'd put in headphones, attempting to cover up the banjo and finger cymbals with something a little less distracting; on top of that, book he'd been struggling to get started on had finally become engaging. So his first clue that something was going on in the area he was sitting in was when one of the attendees of the event tipped his chair back too far and practically fell into Feuilly's lap.

There were hasty appologies and "Are you okay? Are you sure?"s and an "I _told_ you that was going to happen if you kept tipping it back like that" from the other side of the room, and then the meeting went on--with Feuilly now acutely aware of it. Especially as it became clear that it had been going on for some time now, way too long for him to say "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know this area was going to be used tonight" without it being even more awkward. So he just hunched over his book and turned up his music and tried to turn the pages as silently as he could.

After about an hour, the meeting seemed to officially be over, although several of the attendees stayed to hang out; Feuilly saw a pack of cards come out at one table, and a textbook and notes at another. Feuilly pulled the headphones out of his ears (the album he'd been listening to had been finished half an hour ago anyway) and swirled his now-cold coffee in its cup. Lost in his internal debate over whether the drink might be past the disgusting lukewarm stage and into drinkably cold territory, he was taken by surprise when someone slid into the chair across from him.

"Hey, sorry if we were distracting." Feuilly glanced up to see one of the apparent leaders of whatever meeting he'd crashed, a tall man with glasses and deep brown skin. "We tried to keep it down."

"No, I'm sorry I got in your way," Feuilly said hastily. "I didn't know the area was reserved." He felt his cheeks grow hot and wished he had bailed out earlier after all.

"Oh no, there's no reserving space or anything here," the man assured him. "It's first-come, first-served, and you were definitely here first. We would've gone somewhere else, only this is really the only set of tables that's both large enough for us and usually relatively deserted. And this is where people know to look for us. I'm sorry we disrupted your work, though."

"Oh, I'm not working." Feuilly showed him the cover of the book. "Just reading. For fun. Don't worry about it."

The man's eyes quickly flicked over the title. "Isn't that the one about the beginning of the Rennaissance--the one that won the Pulitzer prize a few years back?"

"Yeah, I think so." Feuilly vaguely remembered hearing something about the book on the radio, while stuck in construction on the northbound thruway (on his way to find out what the hell had happened the night before, why he'd come in to work that morning to find an incoherent message from one of his kids on his voicemail, why that kid would only answer him in monosyllables when he frantically called back), the reporter's words flowing incomprehensibly past his ears as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm, uh, catching up. It's been a while since I had the time to read."

"How is it?" the man asked eagerly. "It sounded really interesting, but you know how it is--my 'to read' list is about a mile long."

"Well, I'm only a few chapters in," Feuilly said, "but it's an interesting story. All about this one manuscript that was the last surviving copy of an ancient book, and how it ended up having a huge impact on European thought and possibly playing a role in starting the Rennaissance--just one book."

The man's eyes lit up and he leaned forward. "That _does_ sound interesting. What was the book?"

From there, the conversation ran like wildfire, moving on from the historical influence of Lucretius's _The Nature of Things_ (which, it turned out, Feuilly's interlocutor had read, a few years back; he was able to tell Feuilly about some fascinating pieces of it which hadn't been covered in Feuilly's book) to the educational systems of historical Europe, to educational systems around the world throughout history and in the present day. Feuilly was surprised when the skinny high schooler who worked the single cash register for both the coffee counter and book sales poked his head around the corner of a shelf to announce that the shop was closing in ten minutes. It was nearly ten o'clock, the latest Feuilly had ever stayed.

"I'd better get these dishes back to them," he said, pushing back his chair. "But, uh, thanks. That was really interesting."

"Thank _you_ ," the man said. He stuck out his hand to Feuilly. "I'm Combeferre, by the way."

"Feuilly. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you. So, I don't know how much you heard of the meeting tonight, but we're a literacy advocacy and activism group--we focus mainly on advocating for educational reform, but we do some community work as well. From what you said, it seems like something you might be interested in. We meet here every Wednesday, from seven to--well, in theory we end at eight-thirty, but it's usually more like nine--and you'd be welcome to join us. Our meetings are open to anyone, so if you might be interested, I'd encourage you to just sit in on a meeting or two and see what you think."

Still caught up in the excitement that had flowed through their conversation (and perhaps a warm feeling from really _talking_ with someone outside of work for the first time in three weeks), Feuilly answered without thinking. "Sure; I'd like that."

 

* * *  


Those hasty words haunted him throughout the week, as he shelved books and answered phones and watched the days tick down toward another Wednesday. Why had he said he'd go? It was an activism group, a bunch of wide-eyed idealists set on changing the world. Feuilly knew what idealism meant: It meant working endlessly and seeing no progress, watching your energy bleed away with nothing to show for it, while your ideals crumbled in your hands. It meant fighting a hedge of thorns that grew back twice as fast as you could tear it down, and that ripped at your skin at every blow. Maybe some people could do it, but Feuilly had already proved that he didn't have it in him.

And yet, on Wendesday evening, he found himself walking downtown and buying a drink (green tea, tonight) and making his way back to the art book section. Combeferre was there already, talking with a curly-haired guy in an eye-bleedingly bright pink shirt who, from his face, looked like he could still be in high school. But as Feuilly walked past them, nodding a greeting to Combeferre, he caught the phrase "termination of parental rights," and something about "my other cases," and realized that the man must be at least a college graduate. Because he was definitely a caseworker.

Feuilly picked a seat on the far side of the area, next to the sculpture section.

Tonight's meeting of the ABC Society was an informational session about the Common Core. Feuilly had overheard a few teachers talking with the reference librarian, complaining about the new educational requirements, but didn't really know anything about the standards or why they were so problematic, so he looked over the reference sheet that was passed around with interest.

"The goal of the Common Core sounds like a positive thing," the leader of the group said. "The idea is to make sure students across the country are learning the same things, in the same way, every student gains the academic skills needed for success in higher education and nobody has any unfair advantage. It _seems_ really good, right?

"The _problem_ with the Common Core is that the skills it values are biased toward a particular kind of literacy--the academic literacy that is the language of power in the American education system, which is of course just one of many valuable literacies. Furthermore, the Common Core embodies an ideology of knowledge in which a single meaning resides in the text and the task of the student is to find it; there is no room in the Common Core standards for critical evaluation of a text, of the author's biases, of the way language can be used to support a particular meaning and worldview and silence other perspectives.

"And the modules that have been published to provide teachers with Common Core-compliant curriculum--modules that some schools _require_ teachers to use--are even worse, as the texts these modules use are almost always from the traditional canon of 'great literature,' meaning middle- and upper-class, straight, white, male protagonists. When these texts are the only ones that are used in a classroom, it not only enforces white dominance, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and all the other ideologies that support the power relations of the status quo, it also tells students who are not members of the privileged categories that their stories are not important, that their voices hold no value in school."

The words did sound a little strange coming from the mouth of a classically attractive white man who--judging from his almost military posture and the fact that he apparently considered a polo shirt and khakis to be attire for a casual meeting--almost certainly attended a prep school. But Feuilly got caught up in the speech all the same, recalling incidents in his own education and wondering how things might have been different if--just once--they'd read a book with a Hispanic kid who did something other than work as a migrant farm laborer. Or with any mixed-race kids at all.

"But it's true, you know." A gravely voice broke into Feuilly's musings.

The leader stopped, mid-sentence. "What's true, Grantaire?"

"What you just said--that the voices of black kids have no value in school. They don't."

The leader's face reddened to match his shirt. " _Every_ child's voice has value, regardless of their background-- _especially_ if they come from a group that is often silenced--and if you don't agree, then I'm not sure why you're even here."

Grantaire seemed unaffected by the man's barely controlled fury. "Nah, of course, every person is important and every child is a unique and precious snowflake, et cetera, et cetera--"

"If you're going to mock--" the leader started, but Grantaire talked over him, raising his voice.

"I mean _practically speaking,_ " he said. "You just said it yourself--our educational system runs on upper-class white literacies. Those are the ones the Common Core teaches because those are the ones that have value in higher education and in the institutions that run the world."

Grantaire pushing his chair back so it balanced on the back two legs (and now Feuilly recognized the person who'd fallen over on him a week ago). "If kids of color are so far behind already--ah-ah- _ah_ , _I_ didn't say it, Combeferre said it two weeks ago, that story he read about the grandma who ate all the cakes, and how white middle-class kids grow up surrounded by the ways of speaking and organizing thought that are valued in schools so they come in with essentially five years of pre-school schooling that kids of color miss out on--if that's true, then shouldn't we devote all the time we have in school to teaching them the literacies that their future educational success and, potentially, their livelihood, will depend on? I mean, are we really doing kids a favor when we tell them that their home literacies and ways of speaking are valuable when that's not actually the case, in the real world?"

"Hang on a minute," the caseworker in the violently pink shirt said, leaning forward so suddenly he half stood up out of his chair. "Let's not talk about post-school life as the 'real world.' Because that's just not true. An elementary school classroom isn't some imaginary setting where we prepare avatars for future participation in something real. It very much _is_ the real world, and there are real children in it getting real messages about themselves and their self-worth." He was standing up all the way now, gesturing enthusiastically as he spoke. "And so any time a teacher makes a change in their curriculum, they _are_ changing the real world--in a limited but still very real sense."

"In addition, there are questions of identities and investment: If students encounter stories and images of people like themselves in a variety of roles and . . ." Combeferre took up the argument, and Feuilly _really wanted_ to listen, because as he knew from their previous conversation, Combeferre was very intelligent, and what he was saying sounded an awful lot like what Feuilly had been thinking about earlier--only better worded, and backed up with actual research. But his skin was crawling and he couldn't focus.

The social worker in the pink shirt was leaning forward in his seat, his dark eyes darting from person to person, completely invested in the conversation. Completely committed to this project of fixing the world, of making everything better if they just worked hard enough. Completely blind to their inevitable failure.

It was stupid, Feuilly told himself, letting the poor kid's idealism bother him. What, like he’d never expected to meet another social worker again? But he saw too much of himself—of what he had been—in the caseworker across the room, and it made him feel sick, because it underlined just how far he’d gone. How much he had lost.

But then there was Grantaire, who had dropped all pretense of following the conversation and was drawing what looked like bats on his arm with a ballpoint pen, his legs propped up on the table, bare skin showing through the rents in the knees of his jeans.

If Feuily wasn’t that wide-eyed idealist anymore . . . was he Grantaire? Or on his way to being him?

Feuilly stayed for the rest of the meeting, his stomach in knots, hearing little and absorbing even less. As soon as Combeferre thanked everyone for coming, he was gathering up his things, shoving the handout into his empty cup along with the teabag and napkin, and heading for the exit, firmly resolving that he wouldn’t be back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of the fun of this fic was deciding what books Feuilly (and the others) would read. In this chapter, it's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt. (The ancient book it mentions is The Nature of Things, by Lucretius.)
> 
> The timeline for this story--as far as current events are concerned--is a little more vague. I don't know exactly when the Common Core started to be a big issue, and in later chapters I have blatantly changed the dates when things happened to fit my plot better. The IDEAS, however, about literacy and education and marginalization of non-mainstream voices, are as true as I could make them.


	2. Chapter 2

Library work suited Feuilly. It was quiet, systematic, unchallenging. And, of course, it involved books.

Shelving books was his favorite part of the job. Back in college, when he'd worked in the campus library, some of the desk workers tended to groan a little when it was their turn to reshelve books--or worse, shelf read, verifying the books already on the shelves were in the correct order. Feuilly understood the regret for lost homework time (because there was so little to do at the desk, except during the last two weeks of the semester and occasionally around midterms, that a desk shift was basically getting paid to do your homework--and you got used to that). But even then, he'd loved the chance to go down into the stacks and explore the different sections--thousands of books he'd had no idea even existed. A whole shelf of the ethics of robotics. Astronomy texts from Ancient Persia. The history of the bicycle. Analyses of the impact of technology on religious thought in the twentieth century. Very rarely did he ride the elevator back up from a shelving or shelf-reading shift without at least one call number scrawled on a slip of paper in his pocket. He kept a notebook in the bottom of the drawer with the staplers and extra stamps where he wrote down all the numbers, a list of things he hoped to learn someday.

(He never did manage to read most of them. He got throught two or three books over various school breaks. But he'd left college with the majority of the list entirely unread. But then, he'd left college without a lot of the things he'd expected to be leaving with.)

Now, at the local public library, the subjects he encountered when he shelved books were, in general, more practical and commonplace. He shelved a lot of self-help books, a lot of cooking and gardening, a lot of popular fiction--subjects he'd never had much interest in. But he still rarely finished a shift without encountering something interesting.

And the difference now, of course, was that he had the time outside of work to read them. After his first week in the city--when he'd been so exhausted from moving and learning a new job and . . . everything else . . . he hadn't had the energy to do more than lie on his couch and binge-watch Friends--he started bringing books home from work in the evenings, and soon had ticked off two Latin American plays and a behemoth of a biography that he'd been eyeing for years. And then, with the coffee shops, he found he was spending most of his free time reading. As always, he was swamped, his list from shelving was growing much faster than he could read the books--but it was a good kind of swamped.

Working at the circulation desk was less fun--if nothing else, because half the interesting books you saw there were going out and wouldn't be available to read for at least another two weeks. And of course, you had to deal with patrons, too. There had been a time in Feuilly's life when he'd been pretty good with people (you had to be in his line of work, didn't you) and actually enjoyed meeting new people and seeing a little sliver of someone else's story. Lately, he'd had little interest in it.

Still, the library patrons were, for the most part, courteous and friendly. By six weeks into the job, many of them recognized him and even sometimes asked about his day. (It really wasn't any surprise he got remembered, he reflected--he certainly stuck out in this staff that was mainly white women, middle-aged or older.)

So when a younger guy (who was checking out a hugely ecclectic mix of books--a space opera comic book, a popular new psychological thriller, a Middle Eastern cookbook, a historical mystery about opera singers, and a nonfiction book about the use of the world's water resources) greeted him by name and asked how he'd been, Feuilly assumed it was just that--another friendly patron who had quickly learned the name of the only brown man on the staff. So despite not knowing this person's name or whether he'd ever met him, Feuilly went along with it, chatting with him about the books he was getting out (and the guy was so excited about the comic book series he managed to convince Feuilly to give it a try, even though Feuilly had never thought of comic books as real reading).

And then, out of nowhere, the guy was apologizing to him. "So, I'm really sorry about the other week," he said, as Feuilly ran his books over the desensitizer.

"Uh--sorry?"

"The ABC meeting," the stranger clarified. "Two Wednesdays ago? Enjolras and Combeferre and I all came down with the flu at the same time and we had to cancel at the last minute. And we have an email list to let people know, but you weren't on it, and we didn't have any way to get in touch with you. So yeah, I'm really sorry if you showed up and no one was there. We realized later we should have sent Bahorel in to leave a note on the table or something, but we weren't thinking too clearly." He laughed. "This year's flu is pretty brutal."

"Oh." Feuilly hadn't had any idea the meeting had been cancelled--since he hadn't shown up at all. Nor had he the week afterward. He wasn't sure how to say it though, so he just nodded and said. "Don't worry about it."

"Anyway, tomorrow is definitely on--Bahorel said he was bringing fudge, so there's no way _I_ at least am missing that," the man said with a grin--and Feuilly suddenly, belatedly, recognized him. It was the social worker, the one who'd been wearing the highlighter-pink shirt. "I hope we'll see you there. As someone who works on the practical, local side of these things, I'm sure you have a lot of great ideas about this stuff."

"I--I'll see if I can make it," Feuilly found himself saying.

"Great!" The man's smile was so huge, Feuilly would have been sure he was making fun of him, except that he could detect no trace of insincerity in it. "And let one of us know if you want to be added to the email list. We don't spam people too much, just group updates and sometimes interesting news stories."

"Okay, um, thanks." Feuilly slid the man's books across the counter to him.

"I'm Courfeyrac, by the way," he said as he slid them into his backpack. "I'm not sure we officially met?"

"Feuilly. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you," Courfeyrac said, turning to go. "And remember-- _Saga_ , Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. It will change your _life_."

And, somehow, Feuilly found himself at The Cafe Musain at seven o'clock the following evening.

 

* * *

 

The agenda of the evening was to look back over what the group had done over the school year that had just ended and to do some preliminary brainstorming for future projects. Although why the group tied their calendar to the school calendar was a little unclear, since most of their projects over the past year had been more political--letter-writing campaigns and editorials and participating in a rally in D.C. They had a few more local projects, such as the book drive they'd done around Christmas, but in general their work seemed to be geared toward working toward large-scale systemic change.

Well, Feuilly reflected, sitting back and sipping his lemonade, this would make it easier to back out of the group. He'd never been very good at writing--so he had no skills the group could use--and large-scale things like this just frustrated and discouraged him, so he didn't have much personal stake in staying.

Despite the best efforts of the leader to keep the meeting businesslike and focused, the mood was one of disorderly festivity. The party vibe was increased by the presence (as Courfeyrac had promised) of an enormous tupperware container of insanely delicious chocolate fudge that kept circulating around the tables. It had been brought by an enormous man, possibly Middle Eastern, definitely very fierce looking, all tattoos and leather and punk hair, who sat at the table next to Feuilly's usual spot, working on a very complex, lacy piece of crocheting in violet and magenta.

After reviewing what the group had accomplished in the past ten months and thanking everyone for their great ideas and hard work, the leader paused to grab what must have been his seventh or eighth piece of fudge and check his watch. "We have just fifteen minutes left," he said through a mouthful of chocolate, "so that's not enough time to really brainstorm what we might want to do in the coming year, but does anyone have some ideas to throw out? That way we can start thinking and everyone can come in with lots of ideas next week for the full brainstorm session."

"We should definitely do a booth or something at the sidewalk fair again," Courfeyrac said. "That was so much fun, and I was really surprised by how many serious responses we got."

"The book drive was great, too," another member said.

"We'll need to keep watching the news on this," said a dark-haired girl, "but there's adult literacy funding built into one of the bills that will be going through Congress soon. We should keep an eye on it, maybe do another letter-writing campaign if it looks like that section might get scratched."

"These are all great ideas," Combeferre said, after a few similar comments were put forward, "and we've had some success with most of them in the past. I wonder, though, if there's anything new we should be doing--maybe a different direction than we've taken previously."

"You mean directions other than glorious revolution to take down the corrupt educational system?" asked Grantaire. "Why, when that is the most noble work we could set ourselves to? You know how you can tell it's the most noble?" He leaned over to the other two guys at his table, speaking in a fake stage whisper. "Because it's doomed from the start. Nothing more glorious than a lost cause." His voice was a little slurred, and Feuilly wondered whether he'd been drinking or if it was just an act he put on to be annoying (not unlike, perhaps, the mesh shirt he was wearing). "Jesus Christ . . . the Confederacy . . . the Vietnam war--and of course--"

"Changing the system is not a lost cause," the leader snapped. "It's a enormous challenge, and something that could take _years_ of work. But the reason we're working for it is because we believe it _is_ possible." Combeferre put a hand on his elbow, and he paused for a moment. "However, we've focused our efforts mostly on that kind of work not because we think it's the only right way to address these issues, but simply because that's where our skills and expertise have tended to lie. We can certainly do more practical, local things in this group as well. If anyone has any specific ideas?" 

"But why would you want to?" Grantaire rambled on. "Why would you want to make an actual difference in one kid's life--after all, it's just one kid, and there are millions of kids getting screwed by the system every day, and--"

"Do you have any  _specific_ ideas?" the leader asked again.

Grantaire shrugged and opened his mouth for another rant, and Feuilly, cringing, found himself raising his hand. "Um, I do?"

The eyes of most of the group turned to him, and he almost regretted speaking up. But even more than he hated the thought of alligning himself with an obnoxious attitude like Grantaire's, he hated the thought of Grantaire being the one representative of the "local, achievable change" perspective.

"You talked about the book drive you did around Christmas," he said. "Have you ever thought about doing something similar over the summer, but with school supplies? That's often a need in lower-income communities. Backpacks, especially, but even little things like notebooks and pencils. Of course, maybe someone's already doing this kind of thing--it tends to be popular with church groups--I don't know what services are available, since I'm new to the area--but even if something's already organized, I'm sure you could get involved and help broaden the donation base. It's not very . . . glamorous, I guess. But it's something that could make a real difference."

"That could be really fun," one of the girls agreed. "We could put out boxes in the same places we did for the book drive. I know my dad's office will do it again."

"And I can get us some great deals at the office supplies store--they do an Educators' Week at the end of July."

"Spiderman, we have to get stuff with Spiderman--and the Avengers, and whatever else is cool right now," another person said. "No kid should have to carry a boring plain backpack."

Combeferre was scribbling notes. Grantaire had subsided, stripping the loose threads from the bottom of his cutoff shorts.

"That's a great idea," the leader said. "We can start planning for it at the next meeting. Any other practical projects?"

"My sister's town did this thing last summer," Courfeyrac said, "where a group got a bunch of books and wrapped them up in brown paper bags--so it was like a mystery--and left them around the local farmer's market. The idea was you could take the book home with you, read it, and then bring it back and leave it somewhere for someone else to read. There's some website that does this, you can track the books and see who else gets them, I don't remember what it was called, but anyway, it seemed like a fun way to promote reading over the summer and maybe get books into the hands of kids who might not have access to them."

Combeferre held up his phone. "Was it BookCrossing.com, Courf?"

"Yes! Yes, that's the site. My neice got a huge kick out of it, her copy of  _The Miserable Mill_ had been read by a bunch of people all around town before she got it."

"Where would we put the books?" asked someone else. "There's the public market out on State street, but the regulations there are awfully strict--remember the busking fiasco last summer, Bossuet?"

A skinny black guy at Grantaire's table (possibly the only person Feuilly had ever seen who could wear a fedora and _not_ look like an asshole) groaned theatrically. "I thought we agreed never to speak of that again," he said, grinning. "Something we might want to think about, though, is who has access to the places we might put the books. Because the farmers' markets in this city are, unfortunately, mostly used by upper- and middle-class white families from the wealthier parts of the city. And certainly, promoting reading for _anyone_ is great. But if our goal is getting books into the hands of kids who might not have access, maybe there's a better location for that."

"So maybe we target neighborhood organizations instead," suggested the Asian guy sitting so close to Bossuet he was practically in his lap. "Or public parks? Promoting access to books in low-income neighborhoods would be a great thing, especially with the city libraries cutting back on hours during the summer."

"What we _need_ is a bookmobile," the fudge maker rumbled.

"We have one," Feuilly said. Everyone turned and looked at him. "That is, the library--I, um, work for the library. We have this old bookmobile just sitting in someone's shed somewhere. We--they--didn't have enough staff to keep the program going, I guess, and nobody stepped up to volunteer, and the project ended up getting shut down. But we still have the bookmobile, I mean, it probably need a lot of mechanical work, and we'd have to get enough volunteers to keep it going out every weekend, and--"

"I volunteer as tribute!" Bossuet and the guy next to him shouted in near unison.

"Can we paint it?"

"I know a mechanic who would give us a good rate on the repairs."

The leader added mystery books and bookmobile to the list of things to talk about the next week, and called for more suggestions. A few other ideas were brought up, including a new after-school program that would be starting up in the fall and could use some support and possibly volunteer tutors--and then the meeting came to an abrupt halt with Grantaire slamming his chair down and exclaiming "Shit! My shift starts in fifteen minutes!"

"Sorry," the leader said, as Grantaire gathered up his things. "We've gone over again. Great ideas tonight, everyone; keep thinking of things and we'll brainstorm more next week. Thank you all for coming."

As the members disbanded, Courfeyrac bounced over to Feuilly's table.

"I started _Saga_ ," Feuilly told him before he had a chance to speak. "Well, actually I read the whole first volume last night."

Courfeyrac's face lit up. "What did you think?"

"Well, to be honest, I almost put it down when I turned the page and there were . . . what I _think_ was a pair of very humanoid robots . . . going at it."

"Oops," Courfeyrac laughed. "Yeah, I sort of forgot about that part."

"But it was good," Feuilly went on. "Really good. I mean--not the robot sex. But the rest of it."

The group leader, who had just approached their table, wrinkled his nose in confusion at Feuilly's last statement, and Feuilly felt his face go hot.

"Saga," Courfeyrac explained.

"Ohhh." His face smoothed out. "I see."

Feuilly expected him to say whatever he had come over to say, but instead he just waited. So Feuilly went on with what he was going to say. "I liked how the author pulled big ideas into a very small, very personal story."

"Oh, and it just gets better and better!" Courfeyrac beamed. "And the art, isn't the art fantastic?"

"I don't know much about comic book art," Feuilly admitted. "But it looks pretty creative--I noticed that nobody seems to have the exact same set of horns."

"Yes, _yes,_ and some of them have antlers instead of horns," Courfeyrac agreed. "And it's not just the two races, either; there's all kinds of different races--species?--as the series goes on." He turned to the leader. "I keep telling you, you'll like it."

"And _I_ keep telling you, I don't have time to read fiction," the leader answered, in a tone of transparently fake exasperation.

Courfeyrac shook his head. "You're missing out on so much. Hey, have you two officially met?"

"I don't think so," the leader said, extending his hand eagerly. "I'm Enjolras."

"Feuilly. Nice to meet you."

"It was good to have you here tonight," Enjolras told him. "You had some really great ideas. And it's good to have someone with a more grassroots perspective. I work in law, so I tend to look at things in a more . . . legislative way. We could really use someone with your perspective--and your experience and contacts from the library will be really helpful as well."

Feuilly felt the blood rushing to his cheeks again. "Ah--well, I haven't been at the library very long," he mumbled.

"That's right, you said you were new to the area," Courfeyrac said. "How long ago did you come here?"

"Just a few weeks--I got here in the beginning of May."

"Wow, you're really new! Do you have friends or family in the area?"

"No."

"Then I'm guessing you haven't heard of the Scarlet Toad?"

"No, what's that?"

Courfeyrac went into a kind of spasm of excitement. "Enjolras!" he hissed, grasping his arm. " _He's never been to the Scarlet Toad!_ "

"What's the Scarlet Toad?"

"The best frozen custard on the East Coast," Enjolras said firmly.

"In the country."

"Possibly the world."

"Possibly the universe."

"That goes without saying, all they have in space is that disgusting freeze-dried stuff."

"You don't know what alien civilations might and might not have invented," Courfeyrac objected.

"What's that about aliens?" Combeferre asked, approaching their table. The rest of the space had cleared out, leaving just the four of them. "Hi, Feuilly. Nice to see you again."

"They've probably invented ice cream," Courfeyrac told him. "If they exist."

"I should hope so, for their sake," Combeferre said, quite serious. "Although that would require not only regions of the planet cold enough to allow freezing--not difficult to find, on the whole--but also a lifeform that lactates, which seems like a rather unlikely method for feeding one's young, and even on Earth--"

"The _point_ ," Courfeyrac said quickly, although Enjolras had been leaning forward, apparently quite interested in the statistical likelihood of alien lifeforms that lactated (although Enjolras, Feuilly was beginning to gather, was interested in anything one of his friends was interested in). "The point, Combeferre, is that Feuilly is new to the city and hasn't ever been to the Scarlet Toad."

"You need to go there," Combeferre said immediately.

"We should take you," Courfeyrac said. "I love to watch people experience it for the first time. Hey, we're going there this Saturday night--first we're going to the Statue Garden to watch the fourth-of-July fireworks, and then we're going to the Scarlet Toad afterward."

"You'd be welcome to join us for one or both," Combeferre agreed. "Unless you already have plans for the weekend?"

"I don't have any plans," Feuilly said. "So yes, that sounds great."

 

* * * 

 

The summer passed. The city sweltered under a heat wave that broke a twenty-year record. In his little attic apartment, Feuilly spent his evenings with his windows open, lying in his boxers in front of a cheap box fan and trying to breathe without moving. Then the heat broke and the city was steeped in a week of thunderstorms and oppressive humidity, and everything Feuilly owned was damp and smelled faintly of mildew.

Feuilly worked at the library. He took up jogging (which he decided he liked) and jazz (which he decided he didn't). He visited the city science museum and spent a long, rainy Saturday reading every word of an exhibit about invasive plant species. He walked up to the public market and bought tomatoes in every color of the rainbow. And he continued going to ABC meetings.

Eventually, the jumble of people resolved itself into familiar faces--or rather, a handful of familiar faces, with several unfamiliar ones cycling in and out. Lots of people, like Feuilly, participated on the sidelines of the group, getting the weekly emails and showing up at meetings every once in a while, sometimes helping out at fundraisers or local rallies. A smaller group formed the core of the organization, attending nearly every meeting and handling most of the work the group did. Enjolras and Combeferre were the co-leaders, with Courfeyrac as a third, unofficial, co-leader. The fudge-maker, Bahorel, was another founding member of the group, and had been teaching English at a struggling school in the city for eight years.

The other regulars included Bossuet (the onetime busker), Joly (his boyfriend, joined to him at the hip in a way that was probably adorable if you weren't a little jaded to the whole romance thing), Jehan (a big, soft-spoken man with a sparse yellow beard and a wandering gaze that gave him merely a dreamy impression until you noticed the red and white cane), and Cosette (a prelaw college student with a perfect Catholic schoolgirl look and a surprisingly sharp wit). And--to Feuilly's surprise--Grantaire. Despite giving the impression of not giving a shit about anything the group talked about and considering most of their projects to be infantile naivety, he showed up at every meeting--often late, but always there.

The work on the bookmobile progressed, spearheaded by Bossuet and Joly, although more slowly and in more fits and starts than the group had anticipated. To begin with, several parts of the engine had to be replaced, and the brakes were down to metal--all of which had to be paid for. The library had no money in the budget, so the ABC society ended up doing several fundraisers to pay for the repairs. Even with the van mechanically functional again, it was far from ready. It had been sitting in someone's garage for six years, and the interior was mildewy and nibbled by mice in many places. Fortunately, Grantaire turned out to be a passable amateur carpenter, and Joly and Bossuet convinced him to spend a weekend rebuilding the interior shelving, with their help and Feuilly's. Maybe it was the sunlight and working with his hands, or maybe it was the company (Joly and Bossuet spent the two days coming up with delightfully bizarre would-you-rathers that tended more to the unpredictable than the gruesome), but Grantaire was a lot less disagreeable than he had been at the meetings. He even pitched in to help paint the van the weekend after, decorating the sides of the vehicle with drawings of whimsical cartoon cats in green and yellow and blue.

Between restoring the vehicle and working out a schedule with the library staff and developing publicity material, the bookmobile wasn't actually ready to leave the lot until almost the end of August. In the meantime, the rest of the ABC Society had been busy with other projects, including the backpack drive and a letter-writing campaign in support of the adult literacy funding which, of course, had been slashed from the bill Cosette had mentioned. The letter-writing was ultimately unsuccessful, although Enjolras believed they'd managed to get some publicity for the issue out of it nonetheless, and the backpack drive produced lackluster results (and some worries that the supplies were getting stolen from the donation boxes they'd set up). So, on the whole, not the most productive summer.

But--and Feuilly realized it with surprise, driving back into the city the evening of Labor Day after spending the afternoon hiking in a state park--it had been fun.

 

* * *

 

In September, the regular school year started up, with very little effect on Feuilly's life. The library added some weekend hours, and he got a few of them. Fewer little kids were around during the mornings, and teenagers flocked in in the afternoons to spread out their homework on the by the big windows on the sunny side of the study area. But Feuilly didn't have to worry about anyone's first day of school, didn't have to meet with anyone's teacher to explain their disruptive behaviors, didn't have to negotiate last-minute school switches when a foster family's private school kicked out a teenager with a drug record and claimed it was an administrative error. It was strange, to have this once-monumental watershed come and go without affecting him.

The ABC Society was similiarly untouched by the change. The backpack initiative was filed away under completed projects, and Bahorel started coming in to meetings with his hair bizarrely disheveled from running his hands through it distractedly while talking to his students, but for the most part things went on as normal.

Until October, when the first midterms happened and the area's college students decided to get serious about studying.

One Wednesday in mid October, Feuilly ducked into The Cafe Musain, shivering after a dash through a sudden cold rain squall, and was on his way to the usual space when he thought he heard someone calling his name. He turned to see Combeferre sitting at one of the little counter-height cafe tables, his beat-up Oxfords swinging six inches above the floor. He waved Feuilly over.

"We don't have the space tonight," he said. "There's a bunch of people studying in our usual area, and there aren't enough free tables in any of the other rooms. I sent an email, but it was just twenty minutes ago, so I'm heading off anyone who didn't get it in time."

"Oh, okay. So . . . where are we moving to?"

"We're not." Combeferre shrugged. "Taking the meeting to another coffee shop would be too complicated, and by the time we got everyone on the same page, it wouldn't be worth it. So we're just taking the night off. It's just as well, to be honest; we didn't have that much to talk about this evening, and Courfeyrac has a ton of paperwork."

Feuilly slid into the other chair at Combeferre's table. "Does this happen often?" he asked, glancing around at the busy coffee shop.

"Maybe once every couple of months. It's not that bad."

"Why don't you meet somewhere else? The library has a bunch of community rooms; if they let book clubs and bingo night meet there, I don't know why they wouldn't let your group use the space."

Combeferre considered. "That's a really good idea. How late are they open?"

"Until 9 on Wednesdays."

"That fits well with our schedule. So who would we contact to get permission? We'll have to discuss it as a group, of course, and make sure the different location works for everyone. But I don't see any reason not to start looking into it right away."

Two weeks later, the ABC Society was settling into their new space, a meeting room in the basement of the library. The bare off-white walls and the discarded office furniture shoved into one corner of the room made for a less inviting setting than the cosy, quasi-academic vibe of The Cafe Musain--and of course, there was no coffee here (though half the members walked in with their own). But there were advantages to having a semiprivate, semi-soundproof room to meet in, where the chances of old men browsing right through the meeting or sitting in their midst snickering over books of nude photographs were significantly lower. And Combeferre had gone into a quiet little rapture when he saw that they had wall-to-wall whiteboards on one side of the room.

"We have a lot of get done tonight," Enjolras began the meeting by saying. "Cosette is going to update us on the adult literacy clause in the upcoming jobs bill, and then we have a couple of new projects to discuss. But first, I think we should take a minute to appreciate this wonderful room that is _reserved for us_ every Wednesday until the end of the fall--and to thank our member Feuilly, who is on the library staff here and coordinated getting the room for us."

Feuilly ducked his head, his cheeks flushing with some combination of embarassment and pride, looking awkwardly around at the sparse decor as he waited for the applause to finish, and wondered how this had happened without him being aware of it.  _Our member_ , Enjolras had said. 

Feuilly hadn't realized he'd become a  _member_ of the group. He'd put his email on the list for updates, sure (right there alongside thirty-six people who hadn't shown up once all summer), and he'd come to a bunch of meetings. But it had just sort of  _happened_ ; he'd never made any kind of commitment. (Although he sort of had, he realized, now that he was the keeper of the keys for the group's meeting space--not that he couldn't delegate the task to a staff member who was actually working Wednesday nights, but still.) It felt like he'd made a decision without even realizing it.

_Oh shit_ , he thought.  _I hope I don't regret this._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today, on What Is Feuilly Reading: Courfeyrac mentioned the full title and author, but I'll say it again--Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. This one I've actually read! It's a sci-fi/fantasy comic and I think it's really great. I think it's the kind of thing that Courfeyrac would really like; Feuilly would be a little confused about all the weird setting stuff all mashed up together, but he would appreciate it. Enjolras, meanwhile, would just be completely mystified by the whole thing, like he's glad Courfeyrac enjoys the series but he reads for information and doesn't see the point to reading a fictional comic and the people on this page are just giant heads with legs Courfeyrac why I don't understand.


	3. Chapter 3

_November, 2005. Freshman Year._ Feuilly, drunk off his ass for the first time in his life, is crying. 

"You guys mean so much to me," he slurs, patting his equally drunk roommate's shoulder. "I just, I really want you to know how important you all are to me and how happy I am that we all became so close. I never really had a real family, you know, I was in care ever since I was five, and I had a buncha issues so I got passed from family to family and group homes and stuff. And by the time I got my shit straightened out it was too late, and I figured it was just too late for me to have a family at all, you know? But now I have you guys."

He gestures sloppily with his beer bottle at the circle of faces, a handful eighteen-year-olds bound together by the bewilderment of a drastic shift in setting and a series of accidental circumstances that include the physical proximity of their dorm rooms. "You're all my family now, and I just love you all so much." There are nods of agreement, and group hugs, and more maudlin soliloquoys. At the time, it feels so very warm, so meaningful, so real.

In the morning, Feuilly has a splitting headache, and he can't tell if the slight distance in his roommate's bearing toward him is his imagination, or the effect of their respective hangovers, or . . . something else. He tries to recall the previous night, and while most of his speech is imprinted in his memory in full color, he can't remember whether he was the only one bawling like a baby.

_Sophomore Year._ Feuilly's roommate and their friend Todd both fall for the one girl in the computer science program. Jake "wins" the contest and they manage to keep it from coming between their friendship (although things are sometimes a little awkward at their table in the dining hall)--until two weeks after Valentine's day, when Jake walks in on Todd and his girlfriend. Room draw happens to fall on that very week, and rooming arrangements become a line in the sand, blowing up through their whole friend group. When the dust settles, Feuilly has a double in the dorm next to the science center, and half as many friends as he had a week ago.

_Junior Year_ . Feuilly gets a girlfriend. They bond over their shared frustration over the generalizing language used in the Multicultural Literature of the Twentieth Century class they are taking for their English requirement, and they start hanging out more and more, and at some point asking her out just seems like the appropriate next step to take. 

They date for a little more than six months, going to free lectures together, getting coffee every Sunday evening, rarely arguing--and it's good, except that Feuilly feels like he's pretending the whole time. It's nice, knowing that he Has Plans every Friday evening, even (especially) if those plans are just making microwave popcorn and watching something on Netflix, and he enjoys being there for Rebeca as much as he appreciates her support. But when she kisses him it's wet and awkward and he can't get over the fact that he's tasting someone else's mouth, and he gets the impression that, in a similar way, they're on different wavelengths feelings-wise as well. The whole situation just seems to be asking for a kind of feelings he's not sure he has.

He tries to explain this to her, when he breaks things off, without it becoming an "it's not you, it's me," speech. She looks at him with skepticism, then pity, as he fumblingly tries to explain that he doesn't feel "that way" about anybody, isn't sure he ever has, isn't . . . isn't sure he's capable of those kinds of feelings at all. Maybe he's just not cut out for romantic relationships.

Maybe (and he doesn't say this to her, but it plays itself over and over in his head later that night, as he stares uncomprehendingly at his child development textbook) . . . maybe he's just not cut out for any kind of attachment.

_May, 2009. Graduation Day._ The parking lot beside the football fields is swarming with students and professors and families. People have brought not just their parents to see them walk across a stage and shake a woman's hand, but also their siblings, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, whole strings of aggressively Italian or Norwegian or Polish family lines snaking through the crowded reception area. Everyone is snapping pictures, the arms-over-shoulders, matching-caps-and-gowns stock photos that fill all the picture frames in the campus bookstore. Girls embrace, promising they're going to keep in touch; guys thump each other on the back and reference inside jokes. Feuilly shakes his professors' hands and they wish him well. A few of the students in his program--mostly girls, social work is almost 15:1 in favor of females--hug him goodbye, extracting promises to keep in touch. Feuilly says he will, and the lies just increase his feeling of detatchment.

There was a party the night before at a house off campus. Feuilly went, along with the guys he rooms with. Everyone got pretty drunk--the last night of the best four years of your life only comes once, right?--and there was a lot of weepy reminiscing and promises that "no matter what happened with our parents' college friends,  _we're_ not going to drift apart." 

It was just the alcohol talking. Feuilly knew that, even at the time, but there was a little part of his mind that still wanted to believe it all. His hangover in the morning seemed like a just punishment for more than one kind of stupidity.

He fills a napkin with fruit and cheese cubes and leaves the reception without getting a chance to say goodbye to his favorite professor, unable to stay at this event that seems set up to remind him of all the social milestones he's failed to achieve.

 

* * *  
  


 

_November, 2012._

"All right," Enjolras said. "So Bahorel and Bossuet will try to get us some quotes from teachers at their schools, and Cosette will continue gathering statistics on the detrimental effects of high-stakes testing. If we can have all that together by the beginning of December, we should be on track to have a policy brief ready by the new year. And--"

"And there is where we'll need to stop tonight," Combeferre broke in. "No, it's not even eight yet," he added, as Enjolras looked around in confusion for a clock, "but I've been checking the weather and it looks like the storm is moving faster than they predicted. The National Weather Service has moved up their winter storm warning so it's in effect now, and the highway department just put out a travel advisory. I know some of you have a ways to drive, so I think it would be best if we ended early tonight so everyone can get home safely."

Enjolras nodded. "Yes, that's a good idea. So--we won't have a meeting next week, since that's the day before Thanksgiving, so we'll see you all in two weeks, so November . . ."

"November twenty-ninth."

"Yes, the twenty-ninth, thank you. Have a good holiday, everyone! Drive safe tonight."

"What kind of miserable state gets blizards in the middle of November?" Feuilly grumbled as he pulled on his gloves and wrapped his scarf around his face. "This is ridiculous."

"That's right, you're from the south," Bahorel exclaimed. "I forgot."

"It's your very first Upstate winter!" Jehan crowed. "We'll have to teach you everything--snow tires and long underwear brands and ice scrapers."

"It's only one state below you, it's not  _actually_ the South," Feuilly muttered. "I know about snow. We just have it at . . . more appropriate times."

"Optimal shoveling patterns," Bossuet put in, ignoring Feuilly's objections. "Cross-country skiing."

"Snow angels," Jehan giggled, a funny little sound, coming from such a big man.

"Flannel-lined jeans," Joly said.

"Screw you all," Feuilly growled, trying to hide a smile, "I don't--wait. Flannel-lined jeans?"

"They are the best thing ever to happen to clothing," Joly sighed blissfully. "It's like wearing your pajama pants all day long, but they don't bunch up at your waist or ride up your calves. Also, not as bulky. And they're  _so warm_ ."

"Okay,  _that_ is information I needed  _weeks_ ago. Where do you buy them?"

Joly beamed. "I'll send you the website on facebook."

He could've used a pair of flannel-lined jeans tonight, Feuilly thought, as he trudged through snow already six inches deep on the sidewalks--or even a pair of pajama pants inside his jeans, waist bunching or no. The air was thick with snow--big, sticky flakes that clung densely to his scarf and gloves and built up around his ankles until he was slogging along with huge snowballs for feet. Every streetlight had an orange halo around it, and the sky above was a soft mauve color, almost daytime-bright, with all the light caught up in the falling snow. Everything was quiet, the street empty of cars, the noise from the nearby highway muffled as if Feuilly's head were wrapped in a layer of cotton. It would be so peaceful--if his cheeks weren't stinging and his ears burning and his legs numb inside his jeans. To make matters worse, he'd just come down with a cold, and the freezing air made his cough, which had been quiet all day, flare up again. The 0.9 miles to his apartment had never seemed longer.

When he finally got home, he stripped off most of his clothing just inside the door in an attempt to confine the puddles of melting snow to the area by the door. He shook a tremendous amount of snow out of his jeans and socks, and still the fabric was stiff with ice crystals. In his bedroom, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and found some thick, dry socks, and it was heavenly. But to his annoyance, when he pulled off his T-shirt, a cascade of snow drifted to the floor. A glance in the window--vaguely mirrorlike, with the darkness outside--revealed that while he'd shaken out his clothes well, he'd forgotten about his hair, which was still white with clinging snow.

Grumpily, he stalked to the bathroom to brush the remaining snow into the tub; on the way back, he stepped into some of the snow that had fallen, getting his fresh socks all wet. By the time he was back in his kitchen, a cup of water for hot chocolate in the microwave, Feuilly was cursing himself for his decision to move north instead of down to South Carolina or out west to Santa Fe. The oppressive heat of the past summer was a distant memory, and, with his fingers still clumsy and numb, it was easy to believe that he had exaggerated it, that surely it wasn't nearly as bad as he remembered and might even have been pleasant.

The microwave beeped that his hot water was ready and, two seconds later and half a tone higher, his phone chimed in with a text alert. Feuilly, figuring it was just an automatic message from his phone service provider--and hot chocolate was a higher priority at the moment, in any case--ignored it. But when he was finally sitting down with his hot chocolate and some graham crackers (a poor substitute for the smores and roaring campfire to cook them on that he was craving) and went to delete the message, it turned out to be something else entirely.

_**518-227-5462 (8:39 pm):** _ _ hey just checking in did u get home ok? i know ur not used to snow driving. _

Feuilly didn't recognize the number, but scrolling up revealed a series of brief texts from a few weeks earlier about a meeting time, and he realized who it was--Courfeyrac. He'd gotten Feuilly's number for logistical purposes back when the group was organizing a trip to Buffalo to hear the governor's education speech. Feuilly hadn't bothered saving the number under Courfeyrac's name, not expecting to get anything else from him after the event was over.

He ate a section of graham cracker, then texted Courfeyrac back.

_**Me (8:48 pm):** _ _ Yes, i got home fine. snow driving isn't a problem when you don't have a car. _

The reply came back almost immediately.

_**518-227-5462 (8:49 pm):** _ _ what you were walking in this mess? _

_**518-227-5462 (8:49 pm):** _ _ omg why didn't you say something i wouldve given you a ride _

Feuilly shrugged, realized shrugs couldn't be translated into text, and typed back:

_**Me (8:50 pm):** _ _ its no big deal. i always walk. its not far. _

_**518-227-5462 (8:50 pm):** _ _ FEUILLY THERE IS A FREAKING TRAVEL ADVISORY IF ITS NOT SAFE FOR CARS ITS NOT SAFE FOR PEOPLE _

_**518-227-5462 (8:51 pm):** _ _ WHAT IF AN OUT OF STATE DRIVER WAS ON THE ROAD AND SLID OFF AND HIT YOU _

_**518-227-5462 (8:51 pm):** _ _ i mean no offense but driving in snow is a learned skill and some people dont have it that think that they do _

_**518-227-5462 (8:52 pm):** _ _ seriously tho. i am more than happy to give u a ride--any of us wld. to/from meetings or anytime. just ask _

Feuilly stirred his hot chocolate thoughtfully, unsure how to respond. Courfeyrac seemed almost shocked that Feuilly hadn't asked for a ride; the possibility had never even occurred to Feuilly. The ABC Society people were great, they obviously cared about other people and the world, and Feuilly enjoyed working with them. But asking for a ride home just because it's cold and snowy out . . . wasn't that more of a friends thing?

His phone chimed again.

_**518-227-5462 (8:53 pm):** _ _ you WILL let someone know next time u need a ride won't you? pls? _

Feuilly ate another cracker section, staring at the phone screen, before replying.

_**Me (8:55 pm):** _ _ ok _

He thought for another minute, then selected the number and, after some hesitation over the spelling, added it to his contacts. After another pause, he typed another text, stared at it, deleted it, typed it in again, and then hit send before he could rethink it any more.

_**Me (8:56 pm):** _ _ thanks for checking in on me though _

The reply came as he was carrying his dishes over to the sink. Feuilly unlocked the phone awkwardly, one-handed, to read it.

_**Couferac (8:56 pm):** _ _ anytime :) _

 

_ * * *  _

 

Thanksgiving was rough. Honestly, Feuilly didn't care  _that_ much about the holiday itself. Of course, the day was one of the Big Ones in American culture, and mixed into all the festivity leading up to the holiday was a subtle message that anyone not spending the day with family was to be pitied. (Or not-so-subtle, in the case of one commercial that showed a pale, overweight, balding man staring sadly at a turkey sandwich before tossing it in the trash and going to Olive Garden where beautiful, smiling waitresses showered him with warm breadsticks and bowls of pasta.) But Feuilly had been spending Thanksgiving alone for years, and he was used to the idea; at this point, a quiet evening eating fried rice and watching terrible old B-movies seemed like a great way to spend the holiday.

What he wasn't quite prepared for was spending Thanksgiving in the hospital.

He'd been sick for about a week, an ordinary fall cold. He'd taken care of himself the best he could, made sure to get plenty of sleep and drink orange juice, that kind of thing. But the cold had just refused to go away--and, in fact, had steadily gotten worse. The night before Thanksgiving, he kept waking himself up, he was coughing so hard. He probably had a fever as well (although he didn't have a thermometer to check), because he was shaking with chills, and everything ached. He brought out his extra blanket, and when that wasn't enough, his extra towels and his coat, and huddled under them, telling himself that if he just went back to sleep he'd feel better in the morning. It wasn't until the gray predawn, when what he coughed up started to be tinged with blood, that he admitted defeat and called a taxi to take him to the hospital.

Later on, he regretted taking the taxi. He knew logically that he'd needed to, that trying to walk the mile and a half to the hospital in below-freezing weather with a fever and a horrible cough was an undeniably stupid idea. But still. Even that $20 taxi bill was now more than he could afford.

His health insurance wouldn't kick in until the new year.

All in all, the half-day in the emergency room came out to $1,422.83--when you counted in the two taxi rides and the antibiotics he'd been prescribed. He sat down at his table and stared at the bill Saturday afternoon (he'd spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday in a daze, huddled on the couch under every blanket he owned, watching TV without seeing it, trying to fall asleep because when he was sleeping he wasn't quite so miserable). He looked over the payment plan flyers the hospital had given him. He looked over his bank statements. For about forty-five minutes, he hunched over the calculator on his phone, adding up rent and student loan payments and utilities and medical bills, subtracting out luxuries like a new coat and eating meat. Head pounding, he dug out the loan counseling papers he'd saved and flipped through to find the parts about income-based loan repayment plans and discretionary forebearance due to financial harship. Finally, he gave up, put his head down on the spread of papers, and cried.

 

* * *

 

Several years of practice had enabled Feuilly to be relatively even-keeled about his financial situation. In general, he was able to stick to a frugal lifestyle without stressing out about it or constantly being conscious of how he needed to watch what he spent. But with a thousand dollars of emergency room bills hanging over his head, things were different.

Feuilly went into the first ABC meeting after Thanksgiving painfully concious of the class difference between him and most of the members of the group. Of course, the factor had always been there--most of the group members were obviously middle- and upper-class, and sometimes Feuilly felt the divide like a wall between him and them. When Courfeyrac skipped in every week with his venti iced mocha raspberry frappuchino with an extra espresso shot, or when Enjolras talked about buying organic, or when Cosette mentioned traveling to New Zealand with her father.

Granted, not everyone in the group was swimming in wealth; Jehan was on a graduate school stipend (though apparently with a supportive and well-off family still in the picture) and Bossuet talked a lot about thrifting. Then there was Courfeyrac's friend Marius, who seemed to be living on his couch for the time being, and some periforal members who gave off a definite working-class vibe (Eponine, who had tagged along with Marius once or twice, wore her makup like a mask and clutched her purse defensively, as if daring anybody to suggest it was a knock-off). But for the most part, the group members seemed to be living lives far away from Feuilly's situation. He never said anything about it, but it did get in the way sometimes; earlier that fall he had regretfully passed on an invitation to go apple picking with Enjolras and Combeferre, pleading a vague "too much to do" and hoping they wouldn't ask what (there wasn't anything--Enjolras's description of "an organic farm down in the Finger Lakes region with lots of heirloom varieties that go back hundreds of years without genetic manipulation" had just sounded way too expensive).

Tonight, he couldn't stop thinking about the hospital bills--and he couldn't stop noticing every time the others' actions or words revealed a carelessness about money that he could only dream of. From the fancy organic fair-trade latte Enjolras came in with (Feuilly, looking over his bank statements the day before, had decided he couldn't afford to get coffee anymore. Not even McDonald's.) to Courfeyrac's gleeful suggestion that they should all go out to the new Thai place together sometime (something Feuilly probably couldn't have done even before the whole emergency room thing),  _everything_ seemed to be set up to remind him what a different world he lived in.

Feuilly spent most of the meeting in a state of distraction. He tried to pay attention to the statistics Cosette was sharing, but his mind was wearily flailing away in crisis mitigation mode. He'd been calculating where he could cut corners, doing the math against his student loans over and over again for a few days, and now he found he couldn't stop going back over it. And even more uselessly, his mind had fixated on regretting past decisions. Every time he set himself back on the subject at hand, he would remember some slight extravagance he'd splurged on over the summer--a new pair of shoes, a fan for his apartment, sushi with Combeferre and Courfeyrac, a candle for his kitchen table--and regret that twenty or fifteen or five dollars gone to waste.

Before he knew it, the meeting was over. Mentally exhausted even though he'd hardly managed to think about any of the subjects on the table, Feuilly pretended to be checking his texts as the group members slowly trickled out, talking animatedly about Thanksgiving cooking disasters and family embarrassments. At last it was just him and Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, and he could lock up and  _finally_ go home. But the other three were lingering, Combeferre's papers still spread out over the table. Feuilly approached them, trying to not look like he was anxious to get them to leave--but hoping they would leave.

"How was your Thanksgiving?" Combeferre asked him.

"It was fine." Searching for a quick subject change, he offered, "It sounds like the policy brief is off to a good start--Cosette did a fantastic job with her statistics."

To Feuilly's surprise, Enjolras's face darkened. "It would be a lot better if Bahorel and Bossuet had managed to find any teachers willing to speak on the record. We have some great anonymous quotes, but without a source they'll look like we just made them up."

"It's risky for them," Combeferre said concilatorily, although Feuilly could tell that while he was attempting to see the other side's point of view, he wasn't entirely convinced of what he was saying. "Speaking on the record on this issue could lose them their jobs, if their school administration doesn't agree."

"It  _could_ ," Enjolras assented, grumpily. "But it could also change the whole experience of school for kids across the state--and if other states watch what we're doing, potentially across the country! Surely that's worth it. I mean, I get it, jobs are important, gotta work to eat and all that. But they're  _teachers_ ; caring about kids is the reason behind their entire  _profession._ If anyone cares enough to risk their jobs, it should be the teachers."

"Maybe they don't think it's possible to achieve change this way," Courfeyrac suggested, and Feuilly could see his mind working at the problem, trying to find the words to convince the teachers he was right.

"But there are  _examples_ ," Enjolras practically wailed. "There are the teachers in Seattle who boycotted the MAPS test last spring--that was a bigger risk than giving a quote for some policy brief--but they  _won,_ because they stood together and were unflinchingly brave. Why can't our teachers here do the same? If I could put  _my_ job on the line for this, I would do it in a heartbeat, and--"

And that was where Feuilly lost it.

"It's a lot easier to put your job on the line when you have a full savings account and no kids to feed," he snapped. "Not everyone has the luxury of being so irresponsible. You don't know everyone's situation, and you don't understand what it  _feels like_ to really be living on the edge financially, not unless you've experienced it yourself." 

Now that he'd started talking, the words just spilled out. "And look, the social services are hard, and sometimes you spend all your energy in the everyday caring of your job and you don't have any extra to spend on politics and activism because if you try to do everything you will literally  _fall apart._ " 

His voice cracked and he gripped the back of the chair in front of him to keep his hands from shaking. "So don't--don't judge people's choices unless you've lived in their house and know the full story."

There was a profound silence for a long moment, and in the echoing room Feuilly realized just how loud he'd been speaking. His knuckles on the chair back were white. Staring at his feet, he replayed what he'd just said in his mind, and his face grew hot. He'd said way too much. He'd completely gone off on the leader of the group. What an idiot he was.

"I--I'm sorry," he said. "I--"

"No, you're right." Enjolras's voice was very quiet, and when Feuilly dared a glance at him, he saw that his face was bright red. "What I said was completely inappropriate. I was frustrated with the situation, and with our inability to do more without the teachers' cooperation, but you're absolutely right that it is their livelihood and their decision, and that their situations more than likely make them much less free to take risks than I am." Enjolras's wording was careful enough to sound formulaic, like something composed beforehand and memorized--and yet his tone sounded sincere, almost penitent. "I can't put myself in their shoes--and even if I could, I still wouldn't be right to judge anyone else's decisions. Thank you for reminding me."

"Sorry," Feuilly mumbled again.

"We're not entirely out of resources," Courfeyrac said, his tone subdued, for him, but fathoms lighter than Feuilly or Enjolras's. "There are the forums on that one website Bossuet mentioned; we might get some responses from there. Maybe teachers from other districts will feel freer to speak out."

He and Combeferre carried on the conversation for a few turns, while Feuilly's heart slowed down to a normal pace again. Enjolras offered a few comments--mostly appreciation for their suggestions--much more subdued than a few minutes prior.

Feuilly twisted the strap of his bag between his hands. He'd fucked up, once again slamming a door on his own fingers. Maybe he'd never learn.

Finally, they moved toward the door, and Feuilly locked up the room. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Enjolras walked downstairs with Feuilly, talking now about a movie they wanted to see that weekend and arguing over whether it was likely to pass the Bechdel test. Feuilly turned aside at the bottom of the stairs with a vague wave, heading for the office where he had to return the key. To his surprise, when he got back the three of them were still waiting for him, although now the conversation had inexplicably jumped to groundwater contamination due to fracking techniques used in natural gas drilling.

"Hey Feuilly, I'm giving you a ride tonight," Courfeyrac told him as they walked out the exit.

"N--I'm fine, I--"

"Come on, let somebody do something nice for you," Courfeyrac said, and from anyone else it would sound accusatory, but he made it seem like he genuinely would  _love_ to be able to help Feuilly out. "You look exhausted."

"He's right," Enjolras added. "You do look tired. And your cough didn't sound good, earlier. Are you sure you shouldn't see a doctor?"

"I already did," Feuilly said. "I went in to the ER last week. Pneumonia."

"Oh my God, why are you even here?" Courfeyrac demanded, whirling around in the middle of the parking lot to stare at Feuilly in shock. "You should be home in bed."

"Have you been walking through the snow this whole time?" Combeferre asked. "They shouldn't be making you work at all, but you certainly shouldn't be walking in the cold."

Feuilly shrugged. "I took a few days off." It was all he could afford; he'd had to beg the library to let him come back right away. "I'm not contagious anymore. I'm on antibiotics, I bundle up. It's fine."

"It is  _so_ not fine--" Courfeyrac started, but Enjolras cut him off.

"Okay, well standing out here in the cold isn't going to help anything. Let Courf take you home now, and we can talk about everything else later." Enjolras flicked a glance at Courfeyrac, and Feuilly almost missed the little nod. He forgot the exchange of signals entirely in Courfeyrac's friendly, animated conversation. But by the time they got to his apartment, he'd somehow disclosed his entire work schedule and agreed to let Combeferre give him rides at least for the next week.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Seattle teachers' boycott of the MAPS test is a real event! (It doesn't actually happen until the spring of 2013--still in the future at this point in the story--but it really did happen.) And they won--the district superintendent eventually decided that schools would be allowed to opt out of the test.


	4. Chapter 4

December came. Feuilly got a job at an electronics retailer desperate for holiday help. Despite his misgivings--after all, he'd left social work to get _away_ from60-hour work weeks (among a lot of other reasons)--it really wasn't too bad. He had so much extra time now that it was almost a relief to have something to fill it with. He ended up taking Monday and Tuesday nights at the store, plus a long shift every other Saturday, and it was good to have a way to fill the evenings that didn't involve spending money. And the extra money was a big help, both to his budget and his stress level. It was just for a few months, he told himself. Until he got the hospital bills paid off.

After the nightmare that was November, Feuilly was starting to feel okay again--almost the best he'd been since moving (and, considering what the months leading up to moving had been like, probably by extension the best he'd been in years). Finally, he had his feet under him. He was learning his way around the city, he was in decent physical health and at least on his way to decent financial health, he had a job. He had people he knew--no, he had friends. At least, he didn't _think_ he was wrong to call them friends. Not _close_ friends, not the codependent pseudo-family he'd dreamed of in his college years. But friends.

Caught up in a rush of optimism over his life and where it was going, he accidentally volunteered for something that could ruin it all.

It had been a slow day, and Feuilly had brought some of the simpler repair jobs (paperbacks with the covers falling off, picture books with torn pages) up to the desk with him, so he'd have something to do with his hands while he waited for a patron. As he was bent over _A House is a House for Me,_ trying to match up the torn edges of the paper just right so that the rip would hardly show, he felt someone approach, and looked up to see Sheila, the community programs director.

"Feuilly, right?" He nodded. "How's it going?"

"Slow today," he said, motioning to the tape and pile of books with pink flags. "But I'm keeping busy."

"You do like to keep busy, don't you?" she observed. "You're our liason with the literacy group that meets in here on Wednesday nights, aren't you?"

"The ABC Society? Yes."

"Great. I wanted to ask you something, and maybe you can pass it on to the members. You know about our adult literacy programs, right?"

He nodded. "A little."

"Okay, so we offer tutoring for any adults who are not literate in English. It's a free service, and completely volunteer-driven, and we have a grant from the government for materials; the library just provides the space and coordinates everything as one of our services to the community. It used to be we had mostly native-English-speaking adults who were not literate using this service, but the demographics of the area have changed over the last fifteen years, and now our clients are mostly immigrants and other English-as-a-second-language adults.

"So that's the basics about our program," she continued. "Right now, we're looking for another tutor, because our current pool of tutors is already being fully utilized but we just received another request for tutoring from an ESL individual. Any English-speaking adult can be a tutor, we have some training videos we provide you, as well as the class materials. We have a lot of people who are interested but say, 'Oh, well, I'm not a teacher, so I'm not qualified'--but really, anybody can do this, all it takes is patience and a desire to help someone else out. So if you could pass that information on to the literacy group, and if any of them thinks it might be somethine they would be interested in, can you please tell them to contact me? I have some flyers, too, that you can take, if that'd be useful."

"Sure, I can do that." Feuilly accepted the flyers and returned to taping books back together.

Meeting in the library seemed to be working out well for the group, he thought, as Sheila walked away. The private space made meetings easier and more productive, the bookmobile partnership had been successful until the cold weather closed it down for the season, and apparently awareness of their activities was filtering out into the community (or at least the library community).

And the benefit went both ways; it wouldn't be hard to get literacy volunteers from a group like the ABC Society. Literacy thing aside, who _wouldn't_ be interested in an opportunity like this--a way to pay it forward and help someone make a home in a community that had welcomed you or your family in the past, a chance to get to know someone from a different background and learn about another culture . . .

Five minutes later, he was at the door of Sheila's office.

"That tutoring thing? I'd love to do it."

  


* * *

  


He didn't start regretting his decision until later that evening, when he started looking over the training materials. He'd have a few weeks to get through them, since Sheila had decided it would be easier to wait until after the complications of the holidays to start up a new tutor-client pair, but Feuilly was eager to get started anyway. He popped in the first VHS of the set of three (Sheila had been shocked that such a young person owned a VCR), and the hearty voice of the training facilitator, a balding man with an energetic moustache and faded plaid suit coat, welcomed him to the training, congratulating him on his decision to serve other members of his community and promising an interesting and rewarding experience.

"By volunteering as a literacy tutor," the host said, folding his hands in front of him on the tabletop, "you will not only be providing a valuable service to members of your community by helping them acquire the skills they need to participate more fully in the everyday life of the community, but you will be joining with thousands of volunteers across the country to tackle one of the most pressing problems facing our country. Illiteracy is a serious challenge that affects the lives of thousands of adults in our nation--but it is also something we can do something about. With the help of volunteers like you, we can make adult illiteracy a problem of the past."

Feuilly realized he was gripping the remote control so tightly the plastic was creaking. He paused the video and set the remote down, taking a few deliberately slow breaths, trying to figure out why the _introduction_ to the training was stressing him out so much. He was nervous about tutoring, having never been on the other side of the student-teacher relationship before, but he wasn't even to the techniques and strategies part yet; this was just a friendly, harmlessly unfashionable man from the seventies trying to make him feel good about deciding to volunteer. Why was it making him feel _bad_ instead?

But that was it, he realized: it a man from the _seventies_. Saying that adult illiteracy was a manageable problem, that with a little hard work they could end it within a few decades. Now it was 2012, so far in the future that the technology the man was using to transmit his welcome speech was almost obsolete--and the problem clearly hadn't been solved.

Of course, Feuilly didn't expect to--single-handedly or even as part of a nationwide corps of volunteers--end the problem of adult illiteracy. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind. But he hadn't thought of it as one more relentless, unsolvable problem either, not until this suit-coated gentleman had brought it home to him.

He hadn't done well with unsolvable problems in the past.

Had he made a mistake, stepping back into actively trying to fix things? There was a part of him--battered, weak, but still there--that _ached_ for this kind of thing, that hated the way he spent his days keeping to himself and thinking only about his own needs.

But he remembered what it was like, when he had tried to make the world better. He remembered falling asleep over piles of paperwork because there was _so much to do_ and only twenty-four hours in a day; he remembered getting crushing headaches because every time he closed one case, two more would be opened; he remembered sobbing at his kitchen table at night, sickened at how much evil there was in the world. And he remembered how badly he'd responded, in the face of such insurmountable challenges.

He would be better this time around, Feuilly promised himself. He had his shit together; he was in a better place. He wouldn't get in over his head, he wouldn't let it suck him in. It was just tutoring one person for an hour a week.

He would keep it together.

  


* * *

  


The ABC Society was many things. It was an advocacy group that psuehd for policy changes. It was a community organization that addressed specific material needs in the city. It was an educational effort that worked to spread awareness and understanding of literacy issues. It was not, Enjolras reminded the members, a religious organization of any kind, nor was it a social club ("although literacy activism, like literacy itself, _is_ a social practice," Courfeyrac pointed out--serious, but with a glint of sly glee in his eyes). A Christmas party would be irrelevant to the group's mission.

They were, however, having a wrapping party.

The holiday book drive had been a tremendous success, now that the garland-festooned drop boxes the group had left in offices and lobbies around the city were things people recognized and knew the purpose of. They'd received three hundred books, in all, although many of them were used ("despite _very clear_ signage!" Joly lamented) and would have to be donated to thrift stores. At the next-to-last meeting, Eponine had suggested quietly that maybe they could wrap the books before they passed them on to the other community organizations receiving them, so they looked more like Christmas presents and less like donations. They'd already been planning to spend the last meeting before Christmas sorting the books, so wrapping them at the same time seemed like the logical move. Bahorel volunteered another batch of fudge, and Joly said he could bring in sugar cookies, and the party had spiraled outward from there.

Feuilly met Enjolras and Combeferre at the library early so they could move the tables. Combeferre had brought plates and cups and napkins, and Enjolras's arms were full of rolls of wrapping paper and glittery ribbons and bows, incongruously festive against his serious demeanor. They had just finished rearranging the tables when Bahorel, Cosette, and Grantaire arrived, staggering under the weight of the boxes of books, Jehan bringing up the rear with his cane and the pan of fudge.

"There's more in the car," Bahorel announced, and Feuilly went out with them to bring them in. On their way inside, they ran into Courfeyrac, Marius, and Eponine, who had brought an enormous tin of popcorn of various types and two plates of homemade cookies (since they turned out to be hard as rocks, nobody ever dared ask who had made them). A few minutes later, Joly and Bossuet showed up arm in arm, dressed up as Tupac and somebody called Bambu.

"You said it was a _rapping_ party," Joly giggled.

"We tried to get Grantaire in," Bossuet added, "but he says all white rappers are lame and refused to be any of them."

Back in the meeting room, Combeferre had put some music on--jazzy instrumental Christmas tunes--and he and Jehan were already developing an organizational system for sorting the books. They quickly put the newcomers to work, separating out the used and damaged books from the new ones, sorting the new books by grade level and subject, and then wrapping and labeling them. Feuilly ended up at the final end of the assembly line, writing neat labels ("Grade 1-3. Science--animals." "Grade 4-6. Mystery." "Grade 7-12. Dystopia/Romance.") for the books that Jehan and Courfeyrac were wrapping. Jehan worked systematically, creasing every fold with origami precision despite his thick fingers; Courfeyrac, beside him, was a whirlwind of holiday cheer, curling ribbons on the edge of a scissors blade with festive abandon.

"Ooh, _Redwall,_ he exclaimed, as Eponine passed him another book, with a significant look at Jehan's much bigger pile. "I loved this one. Did either of you ever read it?"

"No," Feuilly said, squinting at the cover. "Is that . . . a mouse holding a sword?"

"It's like a medieval fantasy, but with woodland animals instead of people," Jehan explained. "Mice, squirrels, otters, badgers, that kind of thing."

"And hares, don't forget the hares," Courfeyrac said. "They were always my favorites."

"The otters," Bossuet put in, from down at the other end of the table. "The otters were so cool."

"I liked the birds," Jehan said. "They were usually only minor characters, but I thought the way they talked was really interesting. Their language is usually very different from the way the mammals speak; I suppose it reflects that they're farther removed, biologically. The author does a lot with language and accents, actually. The narrator who recorded the series--or at least, all the ones I could get my hands on as a kid--did a _fantastic_ job with them."

"What always bothered me about that series was the line between good animals and bad animals," Courfeyrac said. "Like, the bad guys are always the same evil-sounding species--rats and weasels and wildcats. Why couldn't he, for once, have had a bad mouse--I don't know, a traitor within the Abbey or something?"

"Well, he tried to take steps in that direction with _Outcast of Redwall_ ," Jehan pointed out. "I personally didn't think he succeeded, though, given . . ."

Feuilly tuned out the conversation as it turned into a long discussion of whether the species in the series could be seen as representing race. He'd never read these books--or most of the books on the table. Of course, there were a _lot_ of books, and few of the people in the room could claim to have read most or even many of them (with maybe Jehan and Combeferre as the only exceptions). Even most of the titles Feuilly recognized, though, were thanks to his work at the library--not because of having read them as a child. He'd read (and promptly forgotten) what they'd shoved on him at school--up to about seventh grade, when he realized his acting out was already such a disruption that no one was really expecting him to do the reading--but he'd never been the type to read things for fun or spend time in libraries. That hadn't clicked for him until around the end of high school. (There was a lot that hadn't clicked for him before that point.)

"Hey Courf, weren't you saying you wanted a copy of _Divergent_?" Enjolras called from the top of the other assembly line, where he was sorting.

"Oh yeah, I forgot!" Courfeyrac jumped up, patting his pockets, and pulled out a crumpled list. He ran up to the top of the line. "I have a list of the books I want for my kids. I figured it would be all right to take one for each of them? Since they're kind of the target population for this project. Can you keep an eye out for these?"

"How does Christmas go for your kids?" Bossuet asked. "I mean, as far as presents."

"We have a budget for gifts," Courfeyrac said. "A lot of them get presents from their biological families as well, and almost all the foster families buy gifts out of their own pockets--but just in case, the caseworkers have a budget to buy a few things for every kid, so no one goes without." He beamed. "Christmas-shopping day is always the _best_ day of the entire year."

"You pick something out for every kid?" Jehan asked, as Courfeyrac scurried back to his spot in the assembly line. "That's a lot of interests to keep track of."

"Well, they each give me a list. And--wanna hear something really cute?--I have fourrequests for the new One Direction CD this year, and _two_ of them are from boys."

"Aww, that's fantastic!" Bossuet grinned. "Man, I wish I could be there on that shopping trip; it sounds like a blast."

"It is _so_ much fun. Two of the other caseworkers and I go together; we take one of the vans and by the end it's just _filled_ with toys and clothes and stuff." He gestured enthusiastically with the book Eponine had just handed him--a book whose cover caught Feuilly's eye.

"Oh hey, I know that one!" he muttered, half to himself--but Jehan heard.

"Which one?" he asked.

"Um, _Maniac Magee?_ " Feuilly said. "We read it in . . . sixth grade, I think. Yeah, it must have been sixth, because--" Because it had been the last year he'd done the English reading--but he wasn't going to say that here.

"I know I read that one," Jehan said slowly. "I remember because it was a Newbery Medal winner, and there was one year I tried to do all of them--oh yeah, and we actually had a Braille copy in our library system." His fingers traced over nothing in the air in front of him, as if he were trying to recreate the feeling of the text. "Was it . . . wasn't that the one with the kid who slept in the zoo? And was obsessed with those butterscotch tastykake things?"

"Yeah, it was a little weird, I guess," Feuilly admitted.

"No, but it was good," Jehan insisted. "The main character is dealing with some really intense issues, I mean he's homeless and an orphan and, if I'm remembering it right, probably depressed--just very much on the edge. But he's not painted as somebody who needs to be rescued, I mean the whole book is about how he's a _legend_ , how he helps transform this racist little town. He's the _hero_ , not a victim."

"And it had a good ending," Feuilly added, recalling how the main character had finally, at the end of it all, found a family who really cared about him, unlike the aunt and uncle he'd run away from. Reading the book had been a confusing experience, he remembered--the story had hit some of his deepest buried desires and sadnesses, tempting him to believe in happy endings, but at the same time enfuriating him, because even then he was cynical enough to know that not everyone got a happy ending. In retrospect, it was no wonder he'd stopped reading not long after that.

Still . . . maybe he should reread it.

  


* * *

  


Christmas week was clear and icy cold. The library was closed around the holiday, so Feuilly took long shifts on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth, working nearly forty hours over the three days leading up to Christmas. The store was bright with tinsel and overly happy music, and swarmed with customers from opening to closing. Everyone was in a heightened emotional state, a strange mix of excitement and stress and goodwill. A few of the customers moved around in a dreamy haze of cheer, beaming at everything; the rest were all scurrying around frenetically, feverishly crossing things off lists and juggling gift baskets and dress shirt-and-tie sets and battery-operated toys and talking rapidly into phones about food and travel and sleeping arrangements for guests--gleefully reveling in being stressed out of their minds.

After the glittery drama of the last few shopping days, Christmas itself was very quiet and empty and relaxing. Feuilly slept in until nine, made scrambled eggs and coffee, and ate them while reading the book he hadn't had a chance to touch in nearly a week--a massive science-fiction novel that mixed geometry and philosophy with extraterrestrial visitors and a setting with a subtle touch of dystopia. Caught up in both the ideas and the story, he read until two o'clock, when the beginnings of a headache and his grumbling stomach forced him to stop for a sandwich.

After eating lunch, he decided to take a walk (surprising himself, because usually a walk in the snow was the last thing he wanted, walking to work every day having stripped all novelty from the activity). The day was intensely cold, but bright and clear, the sun striking sparks from the snowbanks. Feuilly walked briskly through mostly empty streets, with here and there a knot of kids playing in their yards, down to the public park. The walking paths were unshoveled, but people had trampled a clear path down to the bridge over the creek, so Feuilly went down and leaned out over the stream, watching the water bubble along under the leaning mounds of snow on both banks.

The sun was already low in the sky, not quite setting yet, but stretching the shadows out long over the clean, unbroken snow, and painting everything with a wash of warm late-afternoon light. It was quiet and peaceful--but also cold, especially just standing still; after a few minutes of watching chickadees hop around in the brush by the creek, Feuilly decided to head back. Back in his apartment, he made a cup of tea and decided to tackle the second module of the literacy training materials, which he hadn't had a chance to look at since the first day he got them. He watched the video through twice, then pored over the accompanying resources until it was completely dark outside.

He was heating up a can of baked beans to eat for dinner with some leftover rice when he made the mistake of thinking about the Wilsons.

The last holiday he'd spent with them had been the Christmas of his first year after graduating from college. He'd been living on his own for more than four years at that point--ever since turning eighteen--but, except for a few months in a little studio the summer between high school and college, it had all been in dorms and on-campus apartments, even in the summer, and so compared to those blank, transitory spaces, the Wilsons' had always felt . . . if not exactly like home, closer to it than anything else in Feuilly's life.

But the first Christmas after college, things had been different. The family was just as friendly with him as ever, and with his new job as a caseworker, they had lots to talk about. He'd slept in the guest room, just like the past four years (because a new child had moved into Feuilly's old room a few months after Feuilly turned eighteen--a fourteen-year-old with buzzed-short hair and a wary look Feuilly recognized well). Mr. Wilson--Dan--had talked politics with him as with an equal, and the twins had showed off their soccer trophies, and Mrs. Wilson, Sandra, whatever, had made a pecan pie even though she and Feuilly were the only ones in the house who would eat it. Everything was the same as it always had been . . . but somehow, everything was different.

The whole time he was there, Feuilly couldn't shake the feeling that the whole situation was unnatural, artificial, an elaborate joke that would fall apart at any moment. He didn't belong here, with these people. What was their tie to him, after all? Two and a half years of paperwork, of driving him to school, of helping him with his homework at the kitchen table. He'd been a part of their lives, certainly, and they'd been a part of his, but that time was over. And while he still enjoyed their company (and he wasn't quite cynical enough to doubt that they welcomed him), there was no bond between them. They weren't his family.

The next year, when Sandra sent her yearly invitation, a week after Thanksgiving, Feuilly replied that he wouldn't be able to make it that year. Sandra and Dan both made a point of telling him that they would miss him and hoped he'd be able to join them the next year, and Feuilly replied (honestly, even) that he would miss them too. The next year, Sandra had again invited him, and Feuilly had again explained that he couldn't make it; again they'd said they were sorry, and maybe next year.

This year, they hadn't invited him.

Feuilly was sure they'd just forgotten--and in a way it didn't matter anyway, because he wouldn't have been able to afford either the time off work or the bus ticket to go see them, and wouldn't have gone even if he had been able to. He'd already known that he was spending Christmas by himself this year, and the Wilsons probably understood it just as well as he did. After all, you couldn't keep dragging something out when it just wasn't real and never would be. Feuilly had come to terms with the fact that "home for Christmas" just wasn't going to be a thing for him.

Or, at least, he thought he had.

"Shit," he muttered, mopping at his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. "I said I wasn't going to do this today."

It was the worst time of day for him, the rational part of his mind said--early evening, after a day spent alone, not really doing anything productive. Not that he didn't _like_ being alone, or that he didn't need a break every once in a while. But on a day like this, once the light faded out of the sky, it was very easy to get trapped in the thoughts swirling around in the back of his mind, to feel that life was just a long fending off of boredom, a dragging series of days where people kept themselves distracted and entertained until they finally died.

And saying that it was people who gave life meaning didn't help when you hadn't managed to collect any of the people you were supposed to over the course of your life. No family, no close-knit group of college friends, no girlfriend or boyfriend and therefore no kids. Just your own solitary self in a cheap third-floor apartment, crying by yourself over a pan of baked beans.

The beans were hissing angrily and starting to smell like burning sugar. Feuilly turned the burner off underneath them and started to ladle them over the rice. But he didn't feel like eating. He dropped the ladle back into the saucepan, left the bowl on the counter, and slumped into a chair.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to find a thought to distract himself with, something to dwell on other than the way he had irredeemably fucked up his life and would never get a chance to redo it. Something other than how he had to resign himself to being alone because he'd somehow managed to screw up every chance he'd gotten, or how he had to find things to fill up his hours and keep them busy, to keep the emptiness at bay. He couldn't find it in him to say it wasn't _that_ bad, that surely he wasn't seeing clearly, that there was a way to fix this. Because even in his happier moments, _he still believed it all._ It was just easier to be okay with it when the sun was in the sky and he was busy with errands and work and bills. So all he knew to do now was to try to get his mind off it.

Feuilly was crying in earnest now, his face slick with tears, his sobs thin and desperate and pathetic-sounding in his own ears. He put his head down on his arms and tried to get control of himself, taking deep, shaky breaths. The sleeves of his sweater were damp and he felt sick and cold and miserable, and _nothing_ was okay.

Eventually, he cried himself out. He made himself get up and drink a glass of water. He stared at the beans, a skin forming over the top of them. He stirred the pan a little, then got out a tupperware container and dumped the whole mess in. He put the pan in the sink and spent ten minutes scraping burned beans from the bottom of it, scrubbing until his arms ached and his fingers were all pruny.

He went into the bathroom to wash his face and grimaced at his reflection, eyes all red-rimmed and puffy. He decided to take a shower instead--which turned out to be a very good idea. Even as miserable as he was, the pleasantness of standing under the hot water, running his hands through his hair, was undeniable.

After his shower, Feuilly felt a little better, though he still felt shaky and weird and really didn't want to be in his apartment alone. Ordinarily, he would've gone out, to do something practical or just to be around people--to do the grocery shopping or take a walk or sit in a coffee shop and read. But it was well after dark on Christmas. Everything would be closed.

He got out his cell phone and spent a few minutes scrolling through the meager contact list. If he talked to another person, just for a few minutes, maybe he'd feel a little less adrift. He stared at Combeferre's name for a long time before hitting the call button.

Combeferre picked up after a few rings. "Hello?" he asked, sounding surprised and a little concerned.

"Hey, it's Feuilly, I--" The sound of a child's shrieking laughter came through the line, and Feuilly's stomach clenched. "Sorry, you're with your family; I shouldn't have interrupted; it's a holiday--"

"No, it's fine," Combeferre said quickly. The noise faded in the background, and Feuilly heard the sound of a door closing. "My family is Sikh, we don't celebrate Christmas. My sisters and my nephew and neices are visiting because they get the time off from work and school, but it isn't a special day for our family. So what's up?"

"It's nothing, really. I just. I was trying to remember the name of that book you recommended? The one about exploration, and how it influenced the development of medicine? I'm looking for something else to read, and I couldn't remember the title."

"It's called _Extreme Medicine,"_ Combeferre said. "The author is Kevin Fong, F-O-N-G. But did you finish _Anathem_ already? That book is huge!"

"No, no, I'm still working on it. You just--you can only read so much philosophy with all the vocabulary changed in a day before you need to switch to something different."

"Oh yeah, the different vocabulary," Combeferre groaned. "It's driving me crazy!"

"You're reading it?" Feuilly had mentioned the book to Combeferre a few weeks after he'd started it, thinking he might enjoy it, but he knew Combeferre rarely read fiction, and his "to read" list was hovering in the six hundreds, so he didn't think anything would ever come of it.

"I am--it sounded like something you need to devote some good solid chunks of reading time to, and I had the days off, so I figured this was a good time. I'm really enjoying it. I'm not very far in, but the mathic system is _fascinating_ . I would _love_ to live in a concent . . . but at the same time, I keep wondering whether it's a responsible use of knowledge and learning, keeping it all closed up in there. I know they do open their gates from time to time, and the outside world has clearly benefited from their advances, at least technologically. But is it enough to just sit there, waiting for people who are curious to come to you? Or does one have a responsibility to try to actively spread learning and ideas to the world? Or would it be inappropriate to do so, like forcing your way of thinking on someone else?"

"Well, they do--um, well, how far are you? I don't want to give anything away."

"They've just opened the doors for Apert. So yes, I know about . . ."

Combeferre wasn't too far behind Feuilly, though he must have only just started the book a few days ago, and so they could trade opinions and theories about the story without much risk of spoilers. Combeferre, who had been a philosophy minor in college, recognized a lot more of the philosophers and ideas the book was referencing, and by the end of their conversation, which eventually spun off from the novel to philosophy in general, Feuilly had, in addition to the book on the history of medicine, a whole list of authors and articles to take a look at.

His feet were falling asleep, tucked up under him, so he got up and walked around a bit. In the kitchen, his eyes fell on the clock, and he realized, with a surge of guilt, that they'd been talking for nearly forty minutes.

"I should let you go," he said. "Sorry for keeping you from your family so long."

"Don't apologize," Combeferre said. "It was nice talking to you. We've all been so busy lately, it seems like there's been no time to just _talk_ to anyone. And, like I said, I wasn't doing anything tonight."

"Okay, well . . . um, thanks for talking. Really."

"Any time," Combeferre said. "I mean it."

"Have a good night."

"You too; see you soon!"

Feuilly hung up the phone. His apartment was very quiet, after having someone else's voice in his ear for nearly an hour. But it wasn't as oppressive a silence as it had been earlier in the evening. Feuilly stretched, danced around a little as his sleeping feet exploded into pins and needles, and realized he was ravenously hungry. The clock on the microwave read 9:31. The remainder of the evening was just enough time to heat up his leftovers (a second time), watch a bit of TV, and then go to bed.

He'd gotten through another Christmas.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today, on What is Feuilly Reading: LOTS of stuff! The sci-fi novel he and Combeferre discuss is Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, and if you have the determination to get through a thousand-page novel that takes its readers seriously and expects them to be into philosophical and mathematical discussions, it is WELL worth the reading. At the wrapping party, the amis discuss Brian Jacques' classic Redwall series, of course, and Feuilly recalls reading Maniac Magee, a wonderful children's book by Jerry Spinelli that deals with themes of homelessness and racism. Finally, Combeferre recommends Extreme Medicine, by Kevin Fong, which I know nothing about but which sounds like something these two would find interesting.


	5. Chapter 5

The day after Christmas, Feuilly used the last five minutes of his lunch break to check his email on one of the library's public computers (a rare opportunity; usually all the computers were full around the noon hour). In addition to a couple of cheesy holiday messages from his utility company and his bank, he had an email from Combeferre:

  
  


_From: makepunsnotwar@gmail.com_

_To: fr1238@gmail.com_

_Sent: December 26, 9:18 am_

_Subject: checking in_

  
  


_Message:_

_Hey Feuilly,_

_Hope your first day back at work is going well. You seemed kind of down last night, and I just wanted to check in and make sure everything's okay. I know Christmas can be a challenging time for many people--especially with our society's insistence that everyone constantly be cheerful and gleefully merry around this time of year. If you want someone to talk to about anything--literally, if you ever want to talk about_ anything _, from philosophy to dumb science jokes--you can always call me._

_Your friend,_

_Combeferre_

  
  


Feuilly closed his eyes, feeling his cheeks grow hot. Apparently, he hadn't hidden his issues as well as he'd thought. He wouldn't have called Combeferre if he'd known it would give away what a mess he was--after all, he had to keep it together now, if he was going to get back into the business of trying to fix the world. You couldn't help other people unless you had your own shit together; he had learned that the hard way.

He hesitated for a long time before typing a short response:

  
  


_From: fr1238@gmail.com_

_To: makepunsnotwar@gmail.com_

_Sent: December 26, 1:01 pm_

_Subject: Re: checking in_

  
  


_Message:_

_Hi Combeferre,_

_Thanks, I apreciate it. Holidays definitely suck sometimes, but I'm fine now. Thanks for talking, though, it really helped._

_Feuilly_

  
  


His finger hovered over the mouse button; finally, once he had delayed long enough that he would be late clocking back in (not that it mattered, when fewer than a dozen people had come in to the library all day), he got up the nerve, clicked "Send," and logged off the computer in a rush.

He felt extraordinarily awkward admitting implicitly that he  _hadn't_ been okay the night before--especially now that he was back to regular life and his crisis from the night before, while not solved by any means, had at least retreated to an ugly dark cloud in the back of his mind, something that would always be there but that he didn't have to look at unless he chose to. But Combeferre was too nice, first giving up time with his family and then taking the time to check back in with Feuilly later, for Feuilly to lie to him (and make him feel awkward, thinking he'd misinterpreted what was going on).

This wouldn't happen him again, Feuilly promised himself. He was going to do better. He wasn't going to go running to other people with his problems; he would sort himself out so he could function well enough to help other people. Still, it felt good to know that he had that lifeline--if he needed it. He wasn't going to use it. But maybe just knowing that it was there would help him not  _need_ to use it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Feuilly didn't usually go in for New Year's resolutions--when he became aware of a bad habit he had to break, he started in on it at once, instead of putting it off until post-holiday guilt pushed him over the edge. But there was something nice and orderly about starting a new thing in the first month of 2013. This tutoring thing was going to go great, he assured himself: One evening a week, an hour working with a single student, he had all the materials and had carefully gone over the training videos. It would be a great learning experience, but nothing too overwhelming--just the right thing for proving to himself that his previous failures hadn't made him completely useless.

Sheila called him at the circ desk phone early Tuesday afternoon. "Hi, Feuilly? How's it going?"

"Good, you?"

"Fine. So . . . we just got a call from Abdi, the student you're working with tonight? And he mentioned something his sister--I'm sorry, he wasn't very easy to understand, but I think he's planning on bringing her along tonight. Is that okay, Feuilly? I can call him back and tell him if it's not, but . . ."

"Yeah, no--it's fine. That won't be a problem. Do you have another set of books?"

"Sure." Sheila sounded relieved to be off the hook. "I'll bring them by the desk on my way out in an hour. Thank you so much, Feuilly. I really appreciate that you're so flexible."

All right, so two students. Still perfectly manageable. Nothing to worry about.

At 7:12 that evening, the door to the community room opened, and seven people walked in--four men ranging from a teenager to an older gentleman with gray in his beard, and three middle-aged women, everything but their faces covered in scarves and long sleeves and skirts. Feuilly gaped at them for a moment--then stammered a welcome and motioned to the chairs. A little shell-shocked, he passed around registration forms (at least Sheila had given him extras of  _those_ ), hastily announced that he would just go up to the office and get more books, and fled.

In the privacy of the elevator, he had a silent freaking-out moment, clenching his hands in his hair and laughing half-hysterically. He had  _seven_ students, he had never taught a class before in his life, all the training materials had been about one-on-one activities, what was he going to do? As the elevator dinged its arrival at the main floor, he took a deep breath, managing to put on an appearance of calm before the doors slid open.

Sheila's office was locked, and having just (he realized now) basically abandoned seven people in the room downstairs, Feuilly didn't want to waste time trying to track down someone with a key. The materials were all for individual work anyway; the books wouldn't be much use with seven students. He stopped by the printers to get some scrap paper, grabbed a handful of pencils from the reference desk, and took the stairs to the lower level two at a time.  _Introductions and ice-breakers,_ he thought.  _That's what teachers always do on the first day. Learn people's names, vague talk about the goals of the course. That's doable._

At the classroom door, he stopped and took a deep breath.  _Just forty-five minutes,_ he told himself, and opened the door.

Seven faces turned and looked at him expectantly. Feuilly grinned nervously and held up the paper and pencils. Seven pairs of eyes followed him down the room to his seat at the head of the table. He set down the supplies, straightened the already straight pile of books, and looked up at his students.

"So. Welcome to . . . well, welcome to what I guess is going to be an English as a second language class. Tonight we're going to start with introductions, and then maybe play some games to break the ice and get to know each other, okay?"

Seven nods and hesitant smiles.

"Um. My name is Feuilly. I'm twenty-five. I've lived here for seven months; before this I lived in Maryland. This is . . . well, this is my first time being on the  _teacher_ side of an ESL class--I work here at the library. But I'll do my best, and we'll work together to make this a great class, okay?"

Again, seven nods, seven smiles.

"So, now I'd like each of you to introduce yourselves. Tell us your name and a little about yourself--how old you are, how long you've been in the United States, where you work. Okay?"

Seven nods. Seven smiles, slipping a little as the silence dragged out.

Feuilly's stomach sank.  _They don't speak much English,_ he reminded himself.  _You talked too fast, and they don't know what to do._ He took another deep breath and turned to the nearest student, a young woman with tired eyes and a deep blue headscarf.

"Let's start with you, ma'am. What's your name?"

She looked at him blankly, her frightened eyes flickering over to someone on the opposite side of the table.

"Eh--my--she name, Saado," one of the men said.

"Nice to meet you, Saado," Feuilly said. He turned to the man who had spoken, one of the younger ones, maybe in his thirties. "What's your name?" he asked him.

"My name, Abdi," he said haltingly.

"Nice to meet you, Abdi." The older man was sitting next to Abdi, still bundled up in a big olive-green overcoat. "And what's you're name?"

The man looked to Abdi for guidance. "She name, Mohammud,"Abdi tried.

Out of all the students, only the youngest man would speak, and even he waited for Abdi to talk first and then repeated what he had said ("She name, Saahid."). After making a circuit of the room, Feuilly turned back to Abdi. "Abdi," he asked slowly, pronouncing the words carefully, "how old are you?"

Abdi looked at him with wide eyes. "Twen-two ten, south fourteen street?" he guessed.

Feuilly let that go. "Okay," he said, returning to the front of the room. "Name. Tonight we will learn  _names_ . 'My name is'--repeat, please, 'My name is.'" He pointed to the students. "'My name is.'"

"My name is," Saahid echoed, hesitantly.

"Very good! Again--repeat, please: 'My name is.'" Motioning with his hands, he managed to bring half the class in. After a few more repetitions, they were all repeating after him, and the smiles were back out.

Okay, time for a step farther. "My name is  _Feuilly_ ," he said, pointing at himself. He repeated it a second time, then pointed to Abdi.

"My name is Feuilly," Abdi said.

Feuilly shook his head. "Feuilly," he emphasized, pointing to his chest, then pointing at Abdi, " _Abdi._ " He pointed to himself again. "My name is Feuilly."

"My name is Feuillly," Abdi repeated again.

But then Saahid jumped in. "Abdi," he corrected. He said something rapidly in another language, and the others laughed.

"My name is Abdi," Abdi said.

"Very good!" Feuilly turned to Saahid.

"My name is Saahid," he said, without prompting.

They got the idea pretty quickly after that, and by seven-thirty, everyone was able to ask and answer "What's your name?" without too many mix-ups. One question-answer pair, Feuilly thought, out of millions. All right then.

Curious about who he was dealing with, he decided to take a stab at family vocabulary. He went over to the whiteboard and drew a stick-figure man and woman holding hands, then a heart around them.

"Husband," he said clearly, pointing at the man. "Wife. Repeat, please."

Once they'd caught the pronunciation of the words, he started asking around. "Do you have a husband? Do you have a wife?"

"Wife?" Abdi guessed, pointing at Mako, the woman sitting next to him.

"Very good. Mako, do you have a husband?"

Mako hesitated, but one of the other women directed her, and she pointed at Abdi.

"Okay, good." Feuilly went back to the board and pointed to the couple. "Abdi and Mako, yes?" A few of the students nodded.

The halting conversation that followed indicated that the older woman was married to the middle-aged man, and the older man was unmarried (or possibly a widower), as were the younger woman, Saado, and Saahid.

"No," Saahid answered quickly, when Feuilly got to him. "No wife." Feuilly was turning back to the board to move on with the lesson, when Saahid went on. "Feuilly . . . wife?" he asked.

Feuilly blinked in surprise. A vocabulary you could count on two hands, and already Saahid was trying to have an actual conversation--to connect. "No, no wife," Feuilly told him. "You and I," he motioned back and forth between them, "are the same. No wife."

They moved on to sons and daughters next, then sisters and brothers--but there things got confusing, and by the time eight o'clock came, Feuilly had a vague idea that everyone in the class was related  _somehow,_ except possibly Mohammud, but was no longer sure who was married to who and who was siblings with who. Well, they would tackle it next time. He finished with two more rounds of "What's your name" (it was going to be one, but half the class had forgotten the phrase, so he decided to go around again), then signaled by pointing at the clock and putting on his coat that it was time to go home. The students stood up and gathered their coats to leave, returning the green registration forms Feuilly had almost forgotten about entirely. He wondered if he should at least get names down on them, but figured it would be too much of a process and could wait until next time.

"Feuilly, please," Saahid said, holding out his hand.

"Yes?" Feuilly answered. Saahid's smile faltered and he glanced at Abdi.

" _Taas fadlan,_ " Abdi told him. " _Aad macnaheedu mahadsanid,_ 'thank you.'"

"Thank you," Saahid corrected himself. "Feuilly, thank you."

Feuilly grinned. "You're welcome. Goodbye, see you next week!"

Only after the students had gone did he glance at the registration forms. To his surprise, every one of them was filled out completely--name, full street address, date of birth--in shaky but neat handwriting. They might not have been in the country long enough to learn any English yet, but clearly these people were already very familiar with paperwork.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"Feuilly!" Bossuet greeted him the next night, as he and Joly came in to the meeting room. "How was the tutoring?"

Feuilly laughed, a little frantically. "I don't have a tutee," he said. "I have an ESL class.  _Seven_ people showed up. It was supposed to be one. They don't speak any English. Like, none at all."

Bossuet whistled long and slow. "Okay then.  _That's_ a challenge."

"But you do have a common language at least," Joly said. "I mean, you speak Spanish, right?"

"No. Well, I do--but they're not Hispanic. They're from Somalia--I think. That's what I was told, at least. I couldn't really ask them about it, I mean, we're talking no English  _at all._ "

"Do you need help?" Cosette asked. "Marius has been talking about adding on a TESOL minor, I bet he'd love the experience. Hey, Marius! Come over here a second?"

Before Feuilly knew what was happening, he had an assistant signed up to help out with the classes. Marius was . . . not really someone Feuilly had imagined for a teacher. The college sophomore was shy and awkward and every other thing that came out of his mouth started with an apology. But he was also quite smart, and fluent in three languages already--and actually knew something about linguistics. And, with seven students and no idea what he was doing with them, Feuilly wouldn't object to some help, regardless of the source. He and Marius agreed to meet up that weekend (both of them were a little surprised to find that the other's weekend was completely free; it was almost more difficult to make plans when literally any time was possible because neither one of you had anything to plan around) to look over the materials they did have and come up with a tentative plan of action.

The meeting began with Courfeyrac talking about the results of their holiday book drive, announcing the final count of books distributed and reading a couple of thank-you notes from the organizations that had received them.

"My kids loved their books too," he added. "Well, okay, some of them did. Some of them are too cool for reading, right now; you know how it is. But the twins have not stopped talking about Percy Jackson since Christmas, and I visited my seventeen-year-old today and he told me the science book he got was 'pretty cool.' Which for him is high praise." Courfeyrac grinned, but--and maybe it was just Feuilly's imagination--his smile seemed a little tight, a little fragile. He didn't seem quite as buoyant as he should've been, as he usually was when sharing good news like this.

Feuilly kept watching Courfeyrac as the meeting moved on to the policy brief about adult literacy program funding, which Enjolras, Cosette, and Bossuet had put a lot of work into over the holiday break and which was nearly ready to be sent out. Courfeyrac was quieter than usual, and he seemed to drift off into his own thoughts from time to time. There were shadows under his eyes.

"So I have a suggestion," Bahorel announced, as the policy brief was put away and Enjolras asked for any last business before the meeting ended. "There's going to be a national day of action this spring about the new APPR system, and--"

"Sorry, the A-P-R-whatever . . . what is that?" Eponine asked.

"Oh, sorry--APPR is 'annual professional performace review'; it's how teachers are evaluated. Which is supposed to be a good thing, because clearly the problems in our struggling schools are all due to shitty teachers who stopped caring once they got tenure and have nothing to do with how our schools get funded or the challenges connected with poverty . . . "

". . . or the types of knowledge that are valued by our educational system or the cultural bias in our student assessments," Combeferre added.

"Exactly--I mean, not to say that we don't have any bad or burnt-out teachers or that this isn't a problem, but when you fixate on that one factor it makes it really easy for people to ignore the sides of the issue they don't want to talk about. But  _anyway_ ," Bahorel laughs, "that's a whole nother discussion. The point is that many teachers feel the new APPR system, where teachers' jobs and salaries are tied to their students' performance on inappropriate and flawed standardized tests, is massively unfair and unhelpful. And there's going to be a national day of action to protest it. I thought, even though we're not all teachers, it might be something we might want to go to, just to observe. It's good, sometimes, to see what other people are doing--to compare perspectives, and also just to see that you're not the only ones."

"That sounds like a great idea," Enjolras said. "When and where is the nearest protest?"

"It's going to be March 9--that's a Saturday. The original plan was to do it on a Friday, I guess, but then it was decided that not enough teachers would really walk out of schools, not when it would screw over their students and their parents, and that it'd be better to go for a dramatic turnout at the protests than a dramatic effect due to the timing of the protest. And, uh, it's in Albany."

"Road trip!" Bossuet and Grantaire said in unison.

"Yeah, I hoped so," Bahorel grinned.

"That's about three and a half hours," Combeferre said. "That should be doable. If it's not until March we can make more plans later, but for now, you can all think about whether you'd be interested, and mark it on your calendars--March 9, you said, right?"

"March 9," Bahorel confirmed. "And make sure to ask for time off now."

"Grantaire, you're driving," Joly announced as the meeting disbanded. "I do  _not_ trust Bossuet's car to get us all the way to Albany."

"Hey, Iago is a great car," Bossuet protested. "I literally  _just_ got him inspected, and the mechanic said everything was fine."

"Hey Joly," Grantaire said, "do you remember that time Bossuet drove us to Niagara Falls?"

"You mean when Bossuet drove us to that sketchy-ass gas station in the middle of nowhere on the way to Niagara Falls?" Joly laughed.

"That was--"

"Or the time we went to Philly and got stranded in the middle of the Endless Mountains at eleven o'clock at night?" Grantaire went on.

"Did I tell you about the time we broke down  _literally_ thirty seconds after leaving the driveway?"

"Okay, okay!" Bossuet laughed.

Under the commotion, Feuilly approached Courfeyrac, who was already on his way out the door. "Hey," he said quietly. "Are you doing okay?"

"Huh?" Courfeyrac smiled tiredly. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just . . . it's a stressful time of year, at work. I'm a little worn out."

"Yeah," Feuilly said, thinking back to January last year. "Nobody wants to call CPS at Christmas time, so they all wait for January."

"Exactly," Courfeyrac said. He blinked at Feuilly. "Wait, but how did you know that?"

"I used to work for Children and Youth," Feuilly explained. "Foster care, like you."

"Did you?" Courfeyrac's eyes lit up. "Hey, do you want a job? We have an opening in Protective right now, and I'm really,  _really_ hoping someone awesome takes it, so much of that department is the Alpha Male caseworkers who get off on controlling other people's lives. You would be so  _good_ at Protective, though, that would be--"

"No," Feuilly cut him off quickly. "I . . . left for a reason."

"Fair enough," Courfeyrac said. "I'm not going to deny it's a  _really_ shitty job sometimes. But are you looking for work in the field, something that pays more than the library? I know you took a part-time job a while back."

Feuilly shook his head. "No, I'm done with social work. It's--it's just not for me. Or, I'm not right for it. Anyway, I like the library."

"You're good at it," Courfeyrac agreed. "I'm sure you were fantastic as a social worker, too--but you do make an awesome librarian." To Feuilly's relief, he let the subject drop. "I'll see you on Saturday?"

"Saturday? Oh yeah, Joly and Bossuet's game night. Yes, I'll be there."

"Great." Without preamble, Courfeyrac went in for a hug, and Feuilly, because he'd known Courfeyrac for months now, hugged him back without batting an eye at it. "Thanks for checking on me, Feuilly," Courfeyrac said to his shoulder. "I'm so lucky to have such good friends."

That was odd, Feuilly thought as Courfeyrac waved goodbye. He'd thought  _he_ was the lucky one here.

  
  


* * *

  
  


After that first, somewhat rocky session, the English class got easier, as Feuilly and his students, with Marius's help, developed routines and strategies for conversing with limited language and got a sense for what worked and what didn't in the classroom. It also got harder, as Feuilly got through the most emergency-level basics of English--the alphabet, telling your name and where you're from, basic phrases of politeness and essential questions--and had to make decisions about what to teach and in what order. He found himself spending hours on lesson planning, poring over the few ESL textbooks the library had (most of which were aimed at foreign exchange students and assumed a basic knowledge of English, and thus were fairly useless for Feuilly's students) and trying to guess at the reasoning behind the order of material covered. Marius's help proved invaluable here, because he had studied foreign languages from the ground up--multiple times, now--whereas Feuilly could not remember ever not knowing at least  _some_ English; Marius brought his college textbooks to their planning meetings and they translated some of the beginning activities and conversations into simplified English to use with their class.

There were, of course, other people in the city doing this kind of thing--and doing it with a lot more skill and experience than Feuilly and Marius. After two weeks of teaching based almost entirely on guesswork, Feuilly realized what he really should do was connect his students with these services. But that turned out not to be as easy as it sounded. The refugee resettlement agency in the city--and the city's major provider of community services--was Catholic Family Services. They offered free ESL classes at a number of locations and times, but when Feuilly suggested these classes to his students, they rejected the idea vigorously.

Abdi Mohammud (as opposed to the other Abdi and the other Mohammud), a brother-in-law who had been in the United States for two years and who had joined the class : "We are Muslim. We like better not to be . . . what you say, working? Working with Catholic. They have to do the resettlement, the apartment paperwork, for the government, okay. But we no want everything to be with Catholic."

"And three days, no one," Saahid put in.

"Yes, they classes are three days--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We cannot come to class three days. One is better."

Feuilly was still doubtful that this little English class in the library basement was really the best option that could be found for these students--but most of the other options he was finding were with religious-based organizations, or were more advanced programs requiring placement tests or referrals from employers. And it became too much work to both plan his own lessons  _and_ look for better classes (in addition to the other information he found himself looking up--bus schedules and laundromat locations and how to get a non-driver photo ID from the DMV; it was incredible, all the little things that you needed to know not only English but also how to use the internet to find). He could at least get his students through the basics of essential English, and then, once they had a little bit of a grounding, pass them on to someone who could teach them the more advanced stuff better.

And he was enjoying the class--despite all his uncertainty about teaching and the stress of knowing these people depended on him for an essential survival skill. The students worked hard in class, and were constantly surprising Feuilly with their resourcefulness for using their limited vocabularies to get their points across.

And one of the first purposes they put their limited communication toward was making jokes. It was just the fourth week of the class when Saahid, practicing the simple phrases involving prepositions the class had been working on ("Put your hand on your head"; "put your hand under the table"), suggested to Abdi, "Put your finger in your eye," before breaking into giggles. Was humor such a primal human drive? Feuilly wondered. Or was it the originality of jokes, the unpredictability of them, a kind of proof that the person who made them was actually thinking and not just parroting back phrases? He would talk to Combeferre about those questions; Combeferre would enjoy them--and, Feuilly was sure, would be able to call to mind a whole list of philosophical articles dealing with similar ideas.

The cultural exchange was fascinating as well. The students couldn't actually  _tell_ him much about their culture yet, but Feuilly did some research online on Somali culture, and started watching to see if he recognized any of what he'd read in his students. Some things were textbook examples of what the websites he'd read had told him to expect, but in other ways his students were entirely different.

Marius seemed to be finding the experience interesting, too, although it was the little details of their students' language acquisition and the differences between Somali and English that their errors revealed that had him chattering on after every class. Maybe he found it inspiring, too, because after a few weeks of classes, he approached Feuilly at the end of a class to ask for a favor.

"Sure, Marius, what is it?"

"I, uh, I'm taking Spanish this semester, you know, as--as an elective. It's not going to count for anything. But I wanted to take it because my father was Guatemalan. He was our--I mean, he worked for my granfather as a gardener. But since I ended up being raised by my grandfather, I never really learned any Spanish or anything, and I feel like I'm kind of . . . missing out on a part of my culture?" Feuilly nodded, and Marius continued. "It's ironic, I guess, I'm basically fluent in German, and I've studied French and Latin, but I never took any Spanish. I guess I never really thought about being, um, Latino. My grandfather never really talked about my father. He's kind of . . . really racist. My grandfather, not my father. I mean, I don't know, I never really knew my father, so he could be."

He laughed nervously as they walked out to the elevator. "Um, but the favor I wanted to ask. I won't be able to go very far with Spanish at the university; I don't have the credit hours for that many electives. And I'm not learning that much in the lower-level classes; I mean, we're three weeks in and we're still talking about introductions, because half the kids never do the homework. So I was wondering if, maybe, you could speak Spanish with me sometimes. Just to help me get more comfortable with it."

_"Claro,"_ Feuilly told him. " _¿_ _Quieres empezar ya?"_

"Uh . .  _yo_ _no_ . . . um. We've learned nationalities. And, uh, numbers."

"I asked if you wanted to start now," Feuilly told him, grinning.

"Oh! Um,  _s_ _í_ _._ "

The elevator doors opened, and Feuilly and Marius went inside. " _¿Cu _á_ l piso?_ " Feuilly asked, motioning to the buttons.

" _Uno_ ." Marius grinned.

" _¿De dónde eres?_ " Feuilly tried next.

" _De_ . . . Virginia?"

" _Muy bien._ _ ¿Y tu papá, de dónde es? _ "

" _Mi papá . . . es?--es . . . de Guatemala._ " Marius's smile filled his face. "¿ _De dónde eres tu familia?"_

" _Yo no se._ " At Marius's confused look, Feuilly switched back into English. "I don't know where my family is from. My parents . . . weren't really in the picture, and a lot of information about my childhood is just missing. I was living with a Dominican family when I--when I was a little kid. But I don't know if they were actually my uncles and aunts, or if I just kind of ended up in the house. Things were sometimes . . . complicated in my neighborhood."

"Oh." Marius flushed and fidgeted with the buttons of his coat. The elevator reached their floor then, and when they went out, they met one of Feuilly's coworkers, to Marius's obvious relief. She and Feuilly talked library drama (the DVD reorganization project was making chaos of the media section) until they reached the front desk and parted ways.

"So. Saturday afternoon, again, for planning?" Feuilly asked Marius as they left the building.

"Sure, that would be great. See you tomorrow night? Okay, good night!" And Marius fled into the night.

It was funny, Feuilly thought as he walked home, and a little sad, too--all the different ways there were to be rootless.

 


	6. Chapter 6

On Tuesdays, Feuilly worked at the circulation desk from ten in the morning to six in the evening, which gave him an hour between work and ESL class. In theory, that was plenty of time to eat dinner in the little staff room in the basement of the library, to check his email if there weren't long lines for the public computers, maybe even do a little bit of pleasure reading. In practice, it didn't always work out that way. Feuilly was quickly finding that it was simply impossible to be  _too_ well prepared for class--not when you had no idea who might show up or what questions they might have. Add the other things he had to look up to planning for classes, and Tuesday nights frequently saw him spending his hour on the public computers, looking up the phone numbers for the fire department and police and poison control, or printing out alternative worksheets for in case the activity he'd planned to do turned out to be too difficult, or searching for information about the Somali educational system and Somali cultural beliefs about teachers and learning in general.

Which was fine--really, it was an efficient use of an hour that otherwise might end up frittered away uselessly. Only it meant he usually didn't get dinner on Tuesdays. He could deal with missing meals, of course, but he couldn't stop his stomach from growling loudly in the middle of class. At least it lightened the atmosphere; on one occasion the resulting laughter had dispelled a lot of the tension over a particularly frustrating word.

Seven o'clock on the first Wednesday in February found Feuilly staring mournfully at the container of leftover rice and beans he'd brought for dinner, then shoving it back into his lunch bag. There wasn't time to heat it up now. It was a lost cause, he told himself as he headed downstairs to unlock the classroom; he needed to accept that dinner was not a thing that was going to happen on Tuesday nights (or at least, not until after class)--and start bringing snacks so he could at least eat  _something_ before he had to teach.

At 7:01, Feuilly's phone chimed with a message from Marius-- _sorry, running late, be there soon!!_ He had just texted back not to worry, as there weren't any students there yet, when the door opened and Abdi, Mako, Saado, and Mohammud came in, smiling widely as usual.

"Hello, teacher!" they chorused.

"Hello," Feuilly greeted them. "How are you tonight?"

"Teacher, I wife, she--" Abdi said, then his vocabulary failed him, and he motioned instead. Mako held out a foil baking pan, covered in more foil (still speckled with melting snowflakes).

"I cook," she said shyly, setting the pan down in front of Feuilly and removing the foil from the top. Inside was a flat, tanish cake of some kind, sticky-looking, with even rows of almonds set into the top.

"Is basbousa," Saado put in. "Yesterday week?"

"Oh, yes--like we talked about  _last_ week," Feuilly said. They'd talked about food, and the students had spent fifteen minutes trying to collectively explain the process of making a traditional dessert in their country (without knowing the words for flour, sugar, or nuts). "I remember--the cake with almonds."

"You--you eat, teacher," Abdi urged. "Maybe you like."

Mako pulled a small plate and a table knife out of her purse and cut a piece. She pushed the plate toward Feuilly. "Please."

"Um--okay--wow. Thank you for making this. It looks really delicious." Feuilly rummaged around in his bag for the fork he'd brought for dinner. "I think I have a fork somewhere here." His fingers finally closed around it, and he held it up triumphantly.

His students looked at each other and laughed nervously. "Sorry, teacher, we no bring--do not bring," Abdi said. "In my country, we--" he mimed eating with his hand.

"It's all right, I was prepared," Feuilly grinned. He took a bite and tried not to be overwhelmingly aware of the four pairs of eyes staring at him as he chewed. The cake was very moist and sticky--if he'd understood their explanation the previous time correctly, the process involved pouring some kind of sugar and water mixture over the top of it; at the time he'd thought he was misunderstanding, but now, eating the cake, it made sense. He grinned at the expectant faces. "It's very good," he told Mako. "It's delicious. Thank you."

She beamed. "Thank you."

Just then, Marius bustled in, panting and shaking snow from his hair. "Sorry I'm late!" he gasped. "I was working on a paper and I just--lost track of time--and I--what's that?"

"Basbousa," Mako said shyly.

"Ba--bas--"

"Bas _bousa_ ," Mohammud said, speaking up for the first time. Marius repeated the word, and the old man corrected his pronunciation seriously.

"Teacher, you eat, please," Abdi urged Marius. He said something to Mako, who shook her head, covering her mouth. "We--um--only one," he said, motioning toward Feuilly's plate.

"Shall I get some paper towels from the bathroom?" Marius suggested.

"We have some in the staff breakroom," Feuilly said. "Hang on, I'll go get them."

It turned out the staff breakroom also had half a package of little paper plates, forgotten in the cupboard above the sink in the kitchenette. Feuilly grabbed them, along with a handful of paper towels; there were no forks, but he brought a few spoons, just in case.

With a little bit of prodding, Feuilly and Marius convinced the students to eat along with them. As they sat around the table, silent except for the faint sound of chewing, Saahid came in, still bundled up like an arctic explorer.

"So late! I sorry, Teacher," he said, unwinding his scarf. Then he noticed the pan of cake; his eyes lit up and a layer of exhaustion fell from his face. " _Ma aad samayn basbousa_ ?"

"Eat, Saahid," Abdi offered, as Mako cut him a piece.

He held it up to his face, inhaling reverntly. "Ahhh. Many days, teacher, no basbousa." He broke off a corner with his fingers and put it in his mouth, closing his eyes and sighing in delight.

Mako said something to Saado in Somali, and they laughed quietly. Saahid mumbled something back with his mouth full. Abdi translated. "She say, he so small. He must eat much basbousa, become--become--" He mimed growing fatter.

"Teacher too," Mako said quietly, motioning to both Marius and Feuilly.

"Yes, you must eat so much basbousa," Saahid mumbled around another mouthful of cake. "Very hard, very hard," he said seriously. "But you must do it."

The whole room burst into laughter. Even Mako, Feuilly noticed, was giggling quietly behind her hand.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Thursday evenings were, for some reason, the library's slowest nights. Feuilly would've expected it to be Fridays, to be honest, but between people stocking up on DVDs for the weekend and community events like the chess club and the foreign film nights, Fridays were actually one of the busiest nights. Maybe Thursdays were calm in preparation.

Feuilly was working two evenings now, Mondays and Thursdays (which meant that with ESL class on Tuesdays and ABC Society on Wednesdays, all his week nights were full), but he had traded in his Friday night shift for them--which was good, because he actually had plans on Friday nights on a regular basis these days. There was a theater on the far side of town that played older movies right before they went onto DVD; they were cheap, they had audio description for major films so Jehan could participate, and they didn't seem to care if you snuck in food from outside. Joly, Bossuet, Grantaire, and Bahorel, plus various other members of the group from time to time, had been making expeditions there once or twice a month since the fall, trying to see just how far they could go with the outside food before someone called them on it. (Joly and Grantaire were still working out the logistics, but their ultimate goal was an entire turkey dinner.) And if the movie of the week was a genre Feuilly wasn't interested in, well, Enjolras and Combeferre seemed to opt of out most of the same movies (romantic comedies and kids' movies) and could often be counted on for a game of cards or checking out a local band at a coffee shop or just hanging out and talking. So all in all, two weeknight shifts for Fridays off was a trade Feuilly was more than happy to make.

Besides, working the slowest night of the week gave him a chance to work on his lesson planning, or the mountains of other things he found himself looking up for his students. Feuilly didn't usually do outside work while at work; there was usually something else that needed to be done, and he felt he should do what he was getting paid to do. But he was the only desk worker for the last two hours of the shift, so he  _couldn't_ reshelve books . . . and he was only human, and he had  _so much_ to do.

Tonight he was trying to figure out how the new health insurance laws would affect his students, and what they needed to do about it, and when all this was going to go into effect--or even just who he could contact for answers. The government had set up a ton of websites that appeared helpful and straightforward at first glance . . . but then you got into the different enrollment periods and exemptions and state exchanges and everything got very complicated very quickly. By 8:45, Feuilly's head was pounding and he gave up, emailing a few of the more helpful sites to himself to revisit another day.

After making the 15-minute-warning announcement over the speaker system, Feuilly checked in the handfull of books that had been dropped in the bookdrop over the past half hour, closed out the cash register, and switched the phones over to the after-hours voicemail message. With five minutes to go before closing, he put up the "will return shortly" sign on the desk and went to make the final round around the study carrells and the reading area, gathering up abandoned reading materials and drink bottles and gently reminding any lingering patrons that the library would be closing shortly.

There were only three people in the large reading area--the elderly black gentleman who always sat in the corner reading classics and, three nights out of five, fell asleep over them, and two very familiar faces, caught up in a conversation that was no less animated for being conducted in whispers. Feuilly woke up Mr. Hamilton, then turned to Enjolras and Combeferre.

"I don't usually see you here."

"We decided we spend too much time in coffee shops," Combeferre said. "They're pleasant places to work, but it does get expensive, and we're rethinking whether that's where we want our money to go."

"I thought you were all for fair trade and supporting local businesses and that kind of thing."

"Well, yes," Enjolras said. "We are. But the fair trade system, while it has a lot of great ideas behind it, is by no means perfect, and some people have argued that it actually makes things harder on farmers--and a lot of that logic is the same old free-market capitalist bullshit, but some critics do raise some serious questions. Anyway, it's complicated, and we're still doing research on it and figuring out what we think, but in any case, once we realized just how much money we were spending on coffee, we started to question whether that part of our budgets could be applied more helpfully somewhere else. And anyway, I like working in the library, around all the books."

"Nerd," murmured Combeferre fondly.

"Says the person who wanted to come here because he likes to pretend he's still a student," Enjolras returned.

Combeferre's cheeks flushed. "Anyway," he said, pulling out his phone, "it's minus four outside right now--oh, now it's down to minus six--and we thought maybe you could use a ride."

"Oh," Feuilly stammered. "Um, you didn't have to, I--"

"That's why we're here now," Enjolras clarified. "Why we got here two and a half hours before you needed a ride was because we like libraries--this one in particular. You have a fantastic reference section."

"Do we? I haven't worked there much, and--crap." Feuilly remembered that he was, in fact, still working. "I need to get back to the desk. We're closing in two minutes, so . . ."

"We'll be right up."

There was always a tiny little rush at the very end of the night, as patrons emerged like magic from their hiding places in study carrels and in the back of the teen section. Feuilly checked out a pile of CDs to a middle-aged man with bags under his eyes and two SAT prep guides to a pair of high schoolers, and by the time he'd cleared out the line, Enjolras and Combeferre were waiting at the side of the desk, talking quietly about the year's One Book, One Community's pick. The continued talking, slowly drifting in the direction of the doors, as Feuilly made the closing announcement and shut down everything behind the desk."

"Did you read the One Book, One Community pick?" Combeferre asked him, his voice muffled through the scarf he'd pulled up over his face as they hurried to Enjolras's car. "I was going to read it when they announced it in January, but I completely forgot."

"I'm most of the way through," Feuilly said. "It's really good--it has an adventure plot, so it's a pretty interesting story, but it's also very satirical about the U.S. and Mexico and the ways the two cultures view each other. It seemed to generate a lot of interesting discussion at the library book group--I didn't go, I was working, but I saw a lot of people still talking about it as they left."

"It sounded interesting," Combeferre agreed. "I'd like to read it--although I suppose getting it from the library would be impossible at this point."

"Actually, I think we do have a few copies." Feuilly bounced up and down as Enjolras fumbled to unlock his car. "The library bought like two dozen, and a bunch of people have already finished it and returned them. You read so fast, I bet you could finish it by the time the author gets here."

"The author's coming?" Enjolras asked. The keys finally cooperated, and all three piled gratefully into the car--where they sat shivering on the chilled seats. "Sorry, it'll warm up soon."

"Yes, he's giving a talk at the university, I think," Feuilly said. "It's next Saturday, the fourteenth--do you guys want to go with me?" Then he realized the date. "Oh, never mind, it's Valentine's Day; you guys probably have plans."

Enjolras and Combeferre glanced at each other. "No, we're both single," Combeferre said. "I'd love to go."

"Me too," Enjolras said.

"Wait, so you're not--oh. But you always--I thought you two were--" Feuilly slumped down in the seat. "Sorry, this is awkward."

Combeferre laughed through chattering teeth. "We, um--we get that a lot. But we're not dating, and--because this is the second thing everyone seems to think--it's not some kind of in-denial, pining toward an inevitable end situation, either."

"Never gonna happen," Enjolras agreed cheerfully, pulling out of the parking lot. "I'm aro-ace."

"You're . . . what?"

"Aromantic and asexual?"

"What's asexual? And . . . whatever the first one was."

"Well, asexual--and sorry if this is TMI--means I'm not sexually attracted to people. Like, to anybody."

"The same as  _homo_ sexual means attracted to people of the same sex-slash-gender; and  _hetero_ sexual, to people of another gender; and  _pan_ sexual, to people of any gender," Combeferre explained, the same excitement coming into his voice as when he talked about quantum theory or legal reforms in India or record-keeping systems of the Incas. " _A_ sexual means not attracted to anyone of any gender."

"I . . . um, didn't know that was a thing."

"They say it's one percent of the population," Combeferre said, "although that's a very rough estimate, and it's likely the actual number is much higher--or it would be if more people were aware that it  _is_ in fact a thing."

"And aro--the other thing?"

"Aromantic," Enjolras supplied. "That's not being romantically attracted to people. Some people are asexual but still want romantic relationships--I don't."

"Oh." Feuilly thought about that for a while. "That's not . . . lonely?"

Enjolras, pulling up carefully to a red light, shrugged. "It can be, sometimes--our society is so much structured around romantic relationships and marriage and family that it can be hard to see how a life could take a different shape. Everything tells you that romantic relationships are what gives your life value and keeps it from being pathetic, and it's easy to internalize that stuff. But no, other than that, I don't feel lonely. I have lots of friends who are very important to me. And I have Combeferre to share an apartment with and go grocery shopping with and talk about movies at two in the morning with. That's really all I want in life--I don't have any interest in all that other stuff."

"And Combeferre," Feuilly asked, so caught up in the new concept he forgot about politeness, "are you also--oh shit, that's really rude, I'm sorry."

"I don't mind," Combeferre said. "Assuming you were wondering what my sexual and romantic orientations are, that's still . . . unclear. I assume I'm probably somewhere on the asexual spectrum--there's a lot of diversity out there, by the way, it's actually really fascinating--but at this point I don't know for sure. So I'm not ruling anything out, but I'm not in any big rush to find a label to apply to myself, either. Labels are very important to many people--" he nodded toward Enjolras, "--but I'm personally not in a place where I feel like I need one."

"Um," said Feuilly. He had never really considered the question of applying a label to himself. If you weren't gay--and he'd never had any reason to think he was--you were straight, right? "That's . . . really interesting."

"Anyway, the point  _being_ ," Enjolras said, laughing as he pulled up in front of Feuilly's building, "we are both free on Valentine's Day and would love to go to the talk with you. I can't promise I'll have read the book by then, though; I have a lot on my plate right now, and fiction isn't really my thing."

"I want to try to read it," Combeferre said. "Maybe I'll stop by the library tomorrow to get a copy."

"I'll set one aside for you."

  
  


* * *

  
  


When Saado's phone rang in the middle of class, Feuilly was surprised--besides the awkwardly blunt questions like all the English learners in the class asked, Saado was unfailingly polite, far beyond any expectations of American society--but he let it go. After twenty minutes spent explaining--with a vocabulary of about a hundred words--what a themostat was and how to set it so your apartment stayed a reasonable temperature, Feuilly didn't have the energy to stray from the lesson on prepositions into the realm of cultural expectations. Besides, he was sure there was a good reason for the interruption, especially when Saado answered the phone and started talking with no more than a quick "I sorry, teacher." He paused in the lesson and waited for Saado to finish the call, but instead she handed the phone to him.

"Teacher, please? Is Abdi."

"All right," Feuilly said, wondering what this was about. He took the phone and held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hello, teacher? I am Abdi." Abdi's voice sounded very thin and uncertain over the phone. "Please, you talk my son?"

"Yes, of course," Feuilly said. There was an indistinct murmur on the other end of the line, and a child's voice spoke next.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is Feuilly."

"Hello, Mr. Feuilly," the boy said. "My name is Feysal; I am Abdi's son. My father says, can you please talk to the doctor for us? My mother, she is sick, and they have to do a test on her. But first they have to ask a lot of questions, and I don't understand them. Can you help, please?"

"Sure, I can try," Feuilly said. There was more rustling, and some talking in the background, and he was handed off to yet another person.

"Hello?" said a local-sounding woman's voice.

"Hi."

"My name is Nicola; I'm a tech here at the hospital. Are you a relative or friend of Ms. Hanad?"

"I'm her English teacher. What's going on?"

"We're getting ready to do an MRI," the woman explained, more quickly and relaxed than before. "We just have a series of questions we need to ask first, and her husband and son weren't able to understand them all. I can ask you, but if you're just the teacher, you probably don't know her medical history."

"Well, actually, I have her sister here," Feuilly offered.

"Oh good, so you can translate to her, then." Without giving Feuilly a chance to explain that being an ESL teacher didn't mean you were fluent in your students' language, the woman went on to her questionaire. "Okay, so the first question: Does she have a cardiac pacemaker?"

"Um, okay, give us a minute please." Feuilly turned to Saado. "Saado, your sister, Mako. Does she have anything in her heart?" When she hesitated, confused, Marius slid the picture dictionary, open to the anatomy page, across the table to Feuilly. "Heart," Feuilly said, pointing to the diagram. "A pacemaker is a machine, an electric thing, inside the heart."

"Electric . . . like battery?" Abdi Mohammud asked.

"Yes, yes, like that."

Abdi Mohammud said something in Somali to Saado, and she shook her head. "No, no she no have this."

"Okay, no she doesn't have a pacemaker," Feuilly reported to Nicola.

"Great! Does she have an implanted cardiac defibrillator?" Another round of negotiation revealed no. "Okay, and does she have a shunt?"

"I'm sorry, I, um, don't know what that is."

Nicola tried to explain the definition, and Feuilly passed on his best idea of it to Abdi Mohammud. He wasn't entirely certain he'd gotten it right, but Abdi Mohammud and Saado were pretty clear on insisting that Mako had never had anything put inside of her, so he felt confident saying no to the shunt--as well as to the anneurism clip, the cochlear implant, the insulin pump, the prosthesis, and on and on down the list. Each item took several minutes of defining and explaining, with Marius drawing on the whiteboards and all the students in the class jumping in occasionally with guesses and clarifications.

"Okay, just two more," Nicola said after forty-five minutes. "Does she have any metal pins, screws, or rods anywhere in her body?"

Feuilly repeated the question. "No, no metal inside," Saado said at once.

"No," Feuilly told Nicola.

"And the last one: Has she had breast enhancement surgery?"

"Breast enhancement surgery," Feuilly repeated. Saado, covered from head to toe except for face and hands, looked at him uncomprehendingly, and Feuilly wondered how in the world to handle this in a culturally sensitive way.

"Um," Marius said, and when Feuilly and Saado turned to him, he turned bright red. Cupping his hands at his chest, he moved them outward, like inflating balloons.

Saahid laughed and Saado flushed and hid her face, but she answered, "No, she no have that."

"No," Feuilly said into the phone. "No breast enhancement."

"Okay," Nicola said. "That's it. And I think we should be able to finish up here. I'll give you back to Mr. Hanad, then. Thank you so much for helping out."

"Thanks for your patience," Feuilly said. He handed the phone back to Saado, who exchanged a few words with her brother-in-law, then hung up. Feuilly glanced at the clock. It was nearly eight-thirty. "We're done for tonight, I think," he said. "I'll see you all next week."

They left--with a flurry of "thank you, teacher"s from Saado and Abdi Mohammud--and Feuilly and Marius heaved a long sigh of relief.

"We did it," Marius groaned, flopping over the back of a chair. "They know like a hundred words in English, and half of those were terms I didn't even know." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I feel like I just ran ten miles."

"They had Mako's son translating," Feuilly told him. "He sounded like he was maybe ten years old."

"A little kid was trying to translate all that?" Marius gaped at him. "That can't possibly be legal."

"It's probably not."

"But yeah, when has that ever stopped people." Marius shook his head. "It makes you afraid to do anything, you know? Because the more you get out into the world, the more screwed up you realize it is."

Feuilly wanted to say something reassuring, but in his experience what Marius had said was entirely true. So he just grimaced and started packing up his teaching things.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Feuilly's neck hurt. For a minute, as he slowly drifted back toward consciousness, that was all he was aware of. Then he realized he was wearing a coat and jeans and boots, and that he wasn't lying down, but sitting (or rather, slouched over sideways) in a chair. Definitely not his bed. With some effort, he forced his heavy eyelids open.

He was in a movie theater. The seats in front of him were empty, and the screen was playing a Verizon commercial. He was curled up in the velvet seat, his head resting on someone's shoulder.

Feuilly pushed himself up quickly, stammering an apology. The person he'd been sleeping on turned around, chuckling, and Feuilly saw with relief that it was Bossuet--still embarassing, but less so than falling asleep on a complete stranger.

"You're awake!" Joly exclaimed from on the other side of Bossuet.

Feuilly rubbed his eyes, still groggy. Right; they'd gone to see that time travel action movie Grantaire had been raving about since Christmas. He looked around the empty theater.

"Wh--um, where is everyone?"

"Bahorel and Grantaire and Courfeyrac left with the main rush to get the--" Bossuet paused, theatrically looking around the empty theater for evesdroppers, and lowered his voice "-- _spoons and bowls and stuff_ out safely." That night's food experiment had been chicken corn chowder and garlic bread--amazingly (or concerningly), the staff had paid no mind to Grantaire slinking in reeking of garlic, clutching the bulky front of his coat. "And everyone else left a little later; we thought we'd have an easier time convincing the staff to let us stay in here if it was only a couple of us."

"I'm sorry," Feuilly groaned, rubbing his eyes. "You didn't have to--you should have woken me up."

"But you looked so relaxed," Joly said. "No one had the heart to wake you."

"Besides," Bossuet added, "anyone who can fall asleep during the most  _gut-wrenchingly_ brilliant sci-fi thriller of the year must  _really_ need their rest."

"How long have you been waiting here?" Feuilly asked, glancing up again at the commercials playing.

"Half an hour? Maybe forty minutes." Bossuet shrugged. "Don't know, exactly; I wasn't keeping track. Don't worry about it."

"When did you fall asleep, anyway?" Joly wanted to know. "Did you miss a lot?"

"Um . . . I'm not sure?" Feuilly gingerly worked the kinks out of his stiff neck. "There was an old guy trying to kill the main character. I . . . think the old guy  _was_ him?"

Joly and Bossuet exchanged a look. "That's like ten minutes in," Bossuet said. "You must have been exhausted."

Feuilly shrugged. "I was up late a few nights trying to figure out lesson planning." And health insurance. And interpreter services. In fact, he'd been up till one in the morning every night that week, struggling through articles and brochures until he was falling asleep at the kitchen table.

Joly's lips pursed in sympathy. "This class is a lot of work, isn't it?"

"It's just that I don't have any idea what I'm doing," Feuilly explained. "If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't really be too bad, I don't think."

"So hopefully it will get easier as you learn?"

"I hope so," Feuilly sighed.

"Me too. But I'm sorry it's so hard in the meantime." Joly patted Feuilly's arm, a gesture that would have been terribly awkward from anyone else, but from Joly seemed completely natural. "And I'm sorry you missed the movie--but at least you got some sleep in, so that's good!"

"You know what this means, though, Joly?" Bossuet said. "Feuilly  _still doesn't know how it ends_ . We have another fresh viewer."

Joly's face lit up. "You're right! When it comes out on DVD . . ."

"We can make it party--Grantaire will totally watch it again. Bahorel might too, if we offer him food."

"Speaking of which." Joly started the process of winding his absurdly long scarf around his neck. "They're all over at the diner, if we want to join them? The pies tonight are cherry and French silk--which are both pretty bad, actually, but the omelets are always a good bet."

"Aw, guys, I'm really sorry," Feuilly said again as they put on their coats. "You were stuck in here for like half an hour because of me. It must have been so boring--really, you should've woken me up, I--"

"It's fine--seriously," Joly told him. "You know us, we can have fun anywhere. It was nice to just sit and talk for a while."

"But missing out on the diner . . ."

"The diner is still there," Bossuet said.

"--unless Grantaire has managed to burn it to the ground in the last fifteen minutes--"

"--which if he's done that, we  _will_ kill him; the place is a national treasure," Bossuet finished. "And everyone else is still there, too, and probably will be for another two hours. So we can head over now and still have plenty of time for as much crappy pie as a person can eat in one evening."

"Unless you want to just head home now and sleep, Feuilly," Joly offered. "We'd be happy to drop you off on the way if you want."

"Oh yeah, absolutely," Bossuet agreed.

"N--thanks, but I'll go along to the diner. Seeing as I just slept for almost two hours, I guess I can stay up a little later."

"Great!" Bossuet followed Joly out of the row. "It'll be nice to have you there."

"And we'll make sure to wrap up at a decent time, so you don't have to stay out too late," Joly added. "You should take better care of yourself. I know it's for a good cause, but what good will it do if you just make yourself sick?"

Feuilly felt his cheeks grow hot, and he pulled his scarf up around his chin. But Joly fussed over everyone like this, he reminded himself. It was just the way he was. "I'll try to do better," he mumbled.

When he got home that night, the kitchen clock read 11:54. He glanced at the pile of books on the table, but Joly's admonition sounded in his head, and he made himself turn off the light and go on to his bedroom. There was always going to be more work than he could do, and his late nights weren't going to end any time soon.

But just for tonight, at least, he could leave it for tomorrow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today, on What Is Feuilly Reading: The One Book, One Community book is Into the Beautiful North, by Luis Alberto Urrea. (I've never read it, but it sounds interesting, doesn't it?) And this isn't a book, but the movie they go to see is Looper.
> 
> Incidentally, the MRI phone call is based on a real experience I had in my ESL class last year. (Only my students were Spanish speakers--and the hospital still couldn't get a translator?) They didn't have a kid translating in that case, but that kind of thing definitely happens all the time, in all kinds of situations.


	7. Chapter 7

The members of the ABC Society drifted in to the meeting room in twos and threes--Marius and Cosette talking about their psychology professor, with Eponine drifting along behind them in sullen silence; Bahorel and Jehan laying plans for something called "yarn bombing"; Joly and Bossuet and Grantaire debating what would be the most useless superpower.

Feuilly let himself get caught up in this last argument (Bossuet was holding forth for the power to glow in daylight, while Grantaire was hotly defending "paper products come alive around you, but you can't control them"; Joly was switching back and forth between sides at the drop of a hat, giggling madly the whole while), but he kept an eye out for Courfeyrac. He had a whole list of things he wanted to ask him about for his ESL class. Mako's MRI had revealed only a minor problem, and she seemed to be recovering, but Feuilly wanted to know whether there were any Somali-English interpreters in the city, if a similar issue came up in the future. (Of course, the hospital  _should_ have had interpreter contacts of its own, if any were available, but there was still a chance that the lack of an interpreter was due to negligence or laziness rather than having no contacts. Feuilly refused to believe that in a city of 200,000 people, there was not  _one_ person who spoke Somali and English better than a ten-year-old boy.) 

In the meantime, other issues had come up as well: Fuaad had complained of not being able to read Marius's writing on the whiteboard at the last class, and Feuilly had realized that his poor eyesight was holding back his reading more than anything else. Of course, Fuaad didn't have vision insurance, but Feuilly suspected there was some kind of government aid for this kind of thing--if only he knew where to look. Courfeyrac would know; when you were in social work, you quickly got a general familiarity with the services in the area, even the ones that seemed irrelevant to the population you were working with. It would take Feuilly hours of poking around online to get leads on the steadily growing catalog of his students' needs, but some pointers from Courfeyrac might cut the time in half. (He might even offer to help with the paperwork, and though Feuilly would never ask it umprompted, he silently hoped for it. There was a lot of paperwork. For everything.)

But seven o'clock came, and the meeting started--with a a discussion of Script Frenzy, a national challenge for writing screenplays and graphic novels, and whether or not the ABC Society was going to organize write-ins for it, like they had for National Novel Writing Month back in November--and still, no Courfeyrac. The group had already concluded that the turnout for the National Novel Writing Month events hadn't been large enough to warrant setting up events for the smaller challenge by the time Courfeyrac arrived. He mumbled an appology and slumped into a chair, smiling a tight smile that pleaded for everyone to look away. Combeferre shot him a quick, worried look, then moved the meeting on.

The main subject on the agenda for the evening was prepping for the Day of Action, the rally against the new APPR system, which had gone into effect in January. Mostly, there was information to go over about the system; Bahorel and Bossuet had started presenting on it the previous week, but their presentation had brought up the question of whether teacher tenure was a good thing for schools or a bad thing, and the resulting discussion had taken over a good forty minutes of the meeting. So Enjolras declared a "no tangents" rule and yielded the floor to the two teachers to explain why the new "teacher accountability" system--which could so easily be spun to sound like such a great thing--was being implemented in a very unjust way, in many teachers' eyes.

"Twenty-percent of every teacher's score is based on student scores on high-stakes standardized tests," Bahorel said. "And you all know how flawed those tests are, but I'm going to remind you anyway. One: They are about as decontextualized as you can get, and therefore about as inaccurate a measure of preparedness for real-life tasks and problems as you can get. Two: Tons of research has shown that they are culturally biased toward a white, middle-class perspective--which means they're disproportionately unfair to kids who come from other backgrounds. Three: English language learners have to take the same exact Regents everyone else does, even if they've only been in the country a year."

"And yes, they're entitled to accomodations--extra time, and a bilingual dictionary, and a version of the test in their native language if they happen to speak one of the five languages for which translations are available," Bossuet added. "But of course, the English Language Arts exam isn't translated."

"Which means that we have Iraqi kids who a few months ago were living in refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, sitting down in June to get tested, in English, on literature written by old white men and if you think  _that's_ fair--for the kids  _or_ for the teachers whose jobs depend on these scores--I don't think we have anything to say to you." Bahorel grinned wolfishly.

When Bossuet and Bahorel had finished presenting their information and handed out pamphlets from the organization that had set up the rally, the floor was turned over to Combeferre for logistical details. It was a four-hour drive to the state capital, barring unforseen traffic or roadwork, and the rally was supposed to start at ten.

"Which means we really should leave at five," Combeferre said. Over Grantaire's groans, he explained, "That factors in time for traffic and stops along the way. Also, we don't know for sure yet what the parking situation will be, exactly, but there's been some suggestion that we may have to park quite a ways from the rally site and either walk or take public transportation down to the capitol building. Second question: Who is planning on coming?"

Every hand in the room went up, except for Eponine's. "I have to work," she muttered. "Nobody would trade shifts with me."

"Oh, that's too bad," Jehan said. "We'll miss you."

"We'll send you pics!" Joly offered. "Do you have snapchat?"

"I'm liveblogging the event to our twitter feed," Cosette offered. "If you want to follow that."

"I probably won't have time to check it anyway, Saturdays are crazy at the restaurant," Eponine muttered, but she scribbled down the Twitter handle anyway.

"All right, so that's eleven people going," Combeferre said. "Which means taking three cars--"

"Mine holds seven," Bahorel volunteered. "I don't mind driving."

"Party car!" Joly said immediately. "Boss and I will bring snacks."

"I've got drinks," Grantaire said. " _Non-_ alcoholic," he added quickly, at dirty looks from both Bahorel and Enjolras.

Courfeyrac spoke up for the first time since coming in. "Is there going to be a  _sleeping_ car?" he asked, his voice a weary shadow of its usual bubbly tone. "Five in the morning, guys!"

"I'll join you!" Marius said quickly, then immediately blushed to his ears, his flustered reaction drawing everyone's attention to the innuendo that probably would have gone unnoticed otherwise. "I mean, in the quiet car. I have a ton of homework right now, and, um."

"I'll drive a car for people who want a quieter ride," Combeferre offered. "I can take two more, in addition to myself and Marius and Courf." Enjolras and Cosette quickly claimed the remaining quiet car spots. (Marius flushed again, and Eponine stared balefully at the floor, picking at her cuticles.)

The departure time was set for five o'clock sharp, from the library parking lot, arrangements were made for everyone who needed a ride there, and the meeting disbanded, with some joking warnings from Combeferre not to be late ("because getting Enjolras out of bed at four in the morning is a terrifying thing to begin with, and he's not very good at being patient before at least six am"). The useless superpowers debate was picked up again, and new conversations were started, and the members slowly drifted in the direction of the door.

Feuilly lingered, but only because he had the key and needed to be the last one out to lock up; he'd given up his plans of asking Courfeyrac for advice as soon as he'd seen the tense set of his mouth and the way he kept tapping his fingers on the table without realizing it. He watched him now, as the others left; instead of talking with anyone, Courfeyrac was pretending to check his texts, shoulders hunched defensively, the light from his phone screen highlighting the bags under his eyes. Feuilly recognized that mixture of tension and exhaustion--it had stared back at him from the mirror for weeks before things finally fell apart. He would figure out this interpreter and insurance stuff on his own; Courfeyrac clearly had enough problems of his own without getting handed anyone else's.

When Jehan and Bahorel finally took off, Combeferre pulled out the chair next to Courfeyrac and sat down.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

Courfeyrac lifted his head, his eyes glinting with sudden tears. "No," he mumbled.

"What happened?" Enjolras asked, taking the seat on Courfeyrac's other side.

On the other side of the room, Feuilly hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. This seemed like the kind of stiuation he was probably not a close enough friend to be welcome in; surely Courfeyrac would rather not fall apart in front of a guy he'd known barely eight months.

On the other hand, Feuilly had the key. It would be more awkward, he decided, to wait outside the door--or to hover on the far side of the room pretending not to hear. So he went back to the table and slipped quietly into the chair next to Combeferre.

"Nothing  _happened_ ," Courfeyrac sniffled. "It's just. All the same stuff as always. I'm sorry, I--"

Enjolras put an arm around Courfeyrac's shoulders, and Courfeyrac leaned into him. "You had court today, right?"

"Yeah," muttered Courfeyrac. "For the girl with the crazy mom--the woman who kept putting her in care voluntarily and then taking her out again on a whim. Enj, she was  _so awful_ . She always is, but I just can't believe the things she said about her daughter--with her sitting  _right there!_ Stuff like 'she always knew there was something wrong with her,' and 'she's not surprised it never worked out for long in any of the foster homes she was in,' and--ugh, it was horrible. And the girl was  _so quiet_ after court, and I  _told_ her it wasn't true and she shouldn't believe it, but I  _know_ she did, at least a bit."

Courfeyrac took a long, shuddering breath, and pressed on. "And then I got out and found out that the aide who was supposed to take another of my kids to his visit with his brother had called in sick--and this is the same aide who always calls in sick whenever she doesn't feel like working, everyone knows she does it, but administration won't  _do_ anything about it. And I'm trying to reschedule something for the brothers this month, because it's been almost six weeks since they saw each other, but I'm so busy, and I have about two hours of paperwork at home to do, and I have a new case and it's  _horrible_ , what happened to these kids, and it--it's just too much and I can't!"

He burst into tears, burrying his face in Enjolras's shoulder. "I just can't," he moaned, his voice muffled by Enjolras's sweater. "There's too much--I can't do it."

"Oh, Courf," Combeferre sighed. He reached over to rub Courfeyrac's shoulders. "I'm sorry. That sounds so stressful."

"You have so much on your plate," Enjolras agreed. "And it's really high-pressure stuff, too. It has to feel overwhelming." Courfeyrac nodded into his shoulder.

"But you're doing so well," Enjolras continued, running a hand through his hair. "Your kids are so lucky to have you. You care about them so much, and you're working  _so hard_ for them."

"But you have to take care of yourself, too," Combeferre added. "If you burn out, what good will that do anyone?"

"I know," Courfeyrac hiccupped. He lifted his head to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. "There's just so much to do. I hate it that I can't do everything they need."

"Even if ten of you worked night and day, you couldn't make their lives perfect," Enjolras pointed out. "Nobody's life is perfect. You're making their lives  _better_ , and that's what counts."

Courfeyrac nodded and sniffled. Combeferre handed him a tissue, and he blew his nose noisily. "I need ice cream," he croaked, with a wobbly grin. " _Chocolate_ ice cream."

"It's the middle of winter," Combeferre protested, but it was half-hearted, as if he were already resigned to defeat.

"Ice cream knows no season, Combeferre," Enjolras said firmly. He squeezed Courfeyrac's shoulder, then stood up briskly. "I don't think anything's open right now, so we'll have to get it from the grocery store."

"I have spoons in my car," Courfeyrac offered. "I don't remember why, they've been there for like three months. But they're clean--they're plastic spoons, still in the box."

"You in, Feuilly?" Combeferre asked. "You don't have to work too early tomorrow, do you?"

"Wha--um, no," Feuilly stammered, taken by surprise.

"Great! Let's go," Enjolras said, already moving toward the door.

"Wait," Courfeyrac said. "Hugs first."

It took them another ten minutes to get out of the building. Courfeyrac was  _very_ serious about hugs--even hugs from scrawny, recently-acquired friends who hadn't even said anything helpful or comforting--and the process of hugging everyone took up several minutes. And then once they'd made it upstairs, he realized that somewhere in all the hugging and packing up he'd lost his hat, so they trooped back downstairs to unlock the room and look for it. It was nearly nine-thirty by the time they pulled into the parking lot of the little local grocery store.

They ate the ice cream--a half-gallon of the most decadently chocolatey variety they'd been able to find--right there in the car, passing the container back and forth between the front and back seats, digging at embedded chunks of fudge brownie with flimsy plastic spoons, laughing when Combeferre levered a little too enthusiastically and sent a spoonful of ice cream flying up onto the dashboard. It was the weirdest ice cream party Feuilly had ever attended.

His eyes kept being drawn back to Courfeyrac, the way you can't look away from a building that's about to collapse. Because this was, Feuilly was guessing, the beginning of the end. This was where it started to go wrong for Courfeyrac, and--double mocha fudge brownie chunk or no--it wasn't likely he'd manage to pull it back at this point. After all, once you were at the point of breaking down in front of relative strangers, you were pretty far gone, right?

It was true, of course, that Courfeyrac had a very different personality from Feuilly's; it could be that this was just how he was--as willing to reveal his inability to cope as he was to share secret frozen custard joints or embarrassing stories from his middle-school days. (And there was a part of Feuilly that had watched Courfeyrac cry into Enjolras's shoulder with just a tinge of envy mixed in with the sympathy and embarrassment. Of course, Feuilly wasn't jealous of the failure that was linked with falling apart like that. But there was a time, a few months ago, when he was in that same place--and it would've been nice to have someone to catch him when _he_ broke down.) So maybe that was it, Feuilly thought, just a personality thing. Maybe Courfeyrac wasn't all that badly off after all--not burnt out to the point of cracking, just stressed and tired and way too open about his feelings.

Still, Feuilly had been there. And he wasn't optimistic about Courfeyrac's chances.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Bahorel and Jehan pulled up at the curb in front of Feuilly's apartment at 4:45.

"Good morning!" Bahorel greeted him cheerily as Feuilly opened the sliding door of the van. "Are you ready for this adventure?" Feuilly mumbled something that vaguely ressembled a greeting and climbed into the middle seat.

"Here," Jehan said, holding out a large coffee in Feuilly's general direction. "Cream, no sugar, but we have extra sugar packets if you want them."

"Yes, please," Feuilly said, breathing in the steam from the cup. He'd intended to get up early so he could make coffee before he left, but 4:00 in the morning was just way too bleak a time to get up, and it hadn't happened. "God, you're life savers. How much do I owe you?"

"Dude, don't worry about it," Bahorel said. "We figured since we were stopping before we got you and thus depriving you of the chance to pick your own poison, it was only fair."

They pulled into the library parking lot at 4:50. Combeferre rolled down the window of his blue civic and called through the darkness to them. "You're early." Beside him, Enjolras waved sleepily, hunched up over his travel mug.

"You're surprised," Bahorel laughed. Combeferre made a noise that neither affirmed nor denied the accusation, and rolled his window back up. Cosette and Marius showed up not long after, both bundled up to their eyes in scarves, and climbed into the other car.

It was two after five when Grantaire's ancient Ford finally pulled into the parking lot and parked crookedly in the back corner. He and Joly and Bossuet climbed out, lugging backpacks and a cooler, and crossed over to the van, Joly bouncing with energy and Grantaire and Bossuet stumbling (grumpily and sleepily, respectively) behind him.

"You're late," Jehan greeted them as they opened the door.

"You drive a minivan," Grantaire said flatly. "A soccer mom van, Bahorel. What the fuck?"

"Hey, there's nothing feminine about a car that seats seven and has excellent safety features," Bahorel said. "And even if there  _were_ , there would be nothing wrong with that."

"A minivan," Grantaire repeated, climbing into the seat next to Feuilly.

"You won't be so judgemental next time you need to move a couch."

"Everyone ready?" Combeferre called across.

"Yep--let's do this!"

Despite their clamoring for a party car at the meeting, Joly and Bossuet fell asleep almost immediately in a tangle of limbs in the backseat. Grantaire kept himself awake for the first half hour through a combination of sarcastic observations about the bleak winter scenery and sheer stubbornness, but he finally gave in and curled up on the armrest.

So the first two hours of the trip were surprisingly calm in the "party van." Bahorel had several different road trip playlists for different purposes, as he explained to Feuilly, and he put on the "winter-but-after-Christmas-predawn-driving" one, which contained a lot of Bon Iver and Ben Howard--quiet songs whose words were hard to catch and didn't really make sense when you had heard them. They talked quietly over the music as the sky gradually lightened around the empty highway, and the whole world felt very cold and stark--but maybe not in a bad way. Once Bahorel's mix was done, Jehan put on one of his own (when Feuilly asked the title, he waved vaguely and said it was something like "Empty roads and tar and burnt sugar. And also there are hawks."), a playlist that jumped wildly from Gregorian chant to obscure American folk to some kind of experimental electronic music.

Feuilly had been a little apprehensive about riding with Bahorel and Jehan--the English teacher and the literature Ph.D. student. He'd overheard them sometimes before and after meetings, talking about  _Faust_ and Deep Image poetry and representations of the supernatural in early American literature, and Feuilly never understood more than fifty percent of what they said. But Bahorel and Jehan's interests were apparently as ecclectic as their music tastes, and the conversation that started out about the politics of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas somehow morphed into into a wide-ranging and intensely serious discussion of how the world would change if technology for teleportation were invented.

Around two hours into the trip, Grantaire woke up. After a few minutes of staring out at the snow-covered countryside, yawning his way back toward coherence, he got bored and began experimenting with a feather he'd found in the back pocket of Jehan's seat, trying to see how much he could tickle Bossuet without waking him up. Not much, Bossuet proved with a fit of sneezing, waking up not only himself but also Joly. Almost in unison, the two yawned, stretched, and suggested stopping at an IHOP.

"Yeah," Grantaire said, brightening. "Pancakes are what we need." On cue, his stomach grumbled.

"Didn't you eat breakfast?" Jehan asked.

"At four-fucking-thirty? Are you kidding?"

"Pancakes are very important," Joly told Bahorel seriously.

"Feuilly, you're chief communications officer," Bahorel told him. "Text the commander and tell him engineering is requesting a stop for refueling."

"Except maybe make it clear that we mean pancakes," Bossuet suggested. "Not gas."

"Tell him certain people haven't eaten breakfast yet," Joly added. "A healthy breakfast is essential to a successful day."

Grantaire snickered. "That doesn't help us, we're asking for pancakes."

As a debate broke out over whether pancakes of any kind could be considered a healthy food, Feuilly sent a text to Enjolras.

_**Me (7:14 am):** _ _ the party van is requesting an IHOP stop _

The response came back quickly.

_**Enjolras (7:15 am):** _ _ The quiet car pleads time constraints and college budgets and proposes McDonalds. _

_**Enjolras (7:16 am):** _ _ Besides, the closest IHOP is forty miles away. _

Feuilly breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He'd budgeted money for this trip, knowing it would mean eating out a few times, but going to a sit-down restaurant only two hours in was a little beyond what he'd planned on. "How about McDonalds?" he asked his car.

Joly groaned. "Hey, no, McDonalds is fine," Grantaire argued. "I mean, not for, like, real meat. But  _ pancakes _ , Joly--there's no meat there. How could even McDonalds fuck up pancakes?"

"He's right," Bossuet said. "Pancakes are un-fuck-up-able.  _We've_ never even failed at pancakes. I mean, besides burning them, but that doesn't count."

"The essential essence of the pancakes remained perfect," Joly explained, at Grantaire's skeptical look. "It wasn't their fault we burned them."

Feuilly sent back a quick affirmative, and Enjolras replied that there was a restaurant three exits away.

Fueled by pancakes and lots of coffee, the mood in the party van picked up for the remaining half of the trip; Bahorel switched to his "early-morning-driving-playlist-for-creating-sun-on-cloudy-winter-days," which careened back and forth between folk music and Disney tunes and classic rock and a few really weird spoken-word pieces that he and Jehan seemed to have memorized word-for-word.

"You'll love it," Jehan promised, when Feuilly revealed he didn't know anything about slam poetry. "I'll make you a playlist."

By the time they finally got to the state capital, everyone was full of energy and ready to get out and cause some chaos. The long walk through the cold from the parking to the capitol building was a little bit quenching ("Joly, do you do amputations?" Courfeyrac whined. "I'm getting frostbite on my ears, I can feel it!"), but seeing the huge crowd of people assembled there was really exciting.

Feuilly had never been at a protest before, and he felt a little bit like a bug staked out on a pin, standing there on the capitol steps, holding up one of the signs the protest organizers had handed out to them. Cars honked at them as they drove past, and people were chanting a slogan but he couldn't quite make out the words, and the sky was huge and white and icy cold over the dirty, snow-strewn city. Feuilly couldn't shake the feeling that everyone was staring at him (and he couldn't even say why that bothered him; after all, wasn't that the idea of protesting?), even though most of the people he saw on the street were just going about their business as usual.

The day never got any warmer, as the weather report had promised, but the rally began to heat up. After an hour or so, Bahorel and Grantaire got bored with the slogans the protest was using and started coming up with their own; Jehan joined the game, and one of his creations actually caught on in the group at large and was carried on for nearly five minutes straight.

Around noon, a few of the leaders got up on a box and gave speeches through a crackly megaphone. Joly and Grantaire passed around turkey sandwiches and bananas, and Bahorel pulled a bag of M&Ms out of a huge pocket of his overcoat. The knot of protesters near the ABC Society--a group of social studies teachers from New York City--had brought several massive thermoses full of coffee, and they offered to share with their neighbors; Bossuet gave them sandwiches in return, and they talked for a while about teacher stuff, comparing notes about incorporating community service into the high school curriculum.

A rent in the clouds granted the protesters a few precious minutes of sunlight, and Grantaire basked in it, turning his face up to the light and reaching out his hands toward it, as if it were a fire.

"Time for a protest selfie!" Courfeyrac announced, pulling out his phone. He grabbed Feuilly's arm and pulled him into the frame. "Come on, Feuilly; take one with me!" Feuilly could detect no trace of the exhaustion and despair that had so shaken Courfeyrac earlier that week; he'd been watching all morning, but Courfeyrac--somehow--seemed entirely back to his normal, cheerful self. "Say cheese!" he crowed in Feuilly's ear as he snapped the photo.

"We should turn the other way and take it again; the sun was in our eyes and I was squinting," Feuilly protested, but Courfeyrac shook his head.

"We have to get the crowd in the frame--that's the whole point of a protest selfie!" Behind them, Grantaire scoffed; Courfeyrac raised his voice as he continued to explain, although he didn't look up from his phone, where he was busy typing in a caption and tags on the photo. "A  _protest selfie,_ as I'm sure you know, is not  _just_ a memento of an important moment that you'd like to keep a reminder of; it's also publicity for the cause."

He posted the photo and raised his head, looking around as if daring someone to challenge him on the ideology of protest selfies. "Anyone who sees this photo on my social networks is going to see that Feuilly and I-- _and_ the three hundred people you can see behind us--care enough about our teacher evaluation systems to spend a day in Albany protesting over it. A few of them are going to be curious enough to look into what's going on, but even the ones who just scroll past will have seen that this is an issue, and when they hear about it again, it won't be just one more thing to fight about. It'll be 'that thing my friend Courfeyrac is all about.' It's putting a face to the cause in a more personal way."

"That's really interesting," Marius said. "I never thought about it that way."

"Do you want to do one, too?" Courfeyrac offered. "You have a ton of followers on Instagram, you'd get a lot of exposure."

Marius shook his head quickly. "No, no--I, um, don't want anything online about me being here. My grandfather . . . he doesn't actually have facebook or anything. But he'd find them anyway, and that'd just make things worse." Courfeyrac nodded, and squeezed Marius's shoulder.

"Then you might want to step a ways away," Cosette suggested. "It looks like the press are here."

Feuilly looked up and saw a camera crew from what appeared to be a local news organization approaching Enjolras. Reporters from varius places had been around all day, but this was the first time anyone had come anywhere near their group. As Cosette and Marius drifted away into the crowd, Feuilly worked his way over to behind the news crew to listen in.

"I'm not actually a teacher," Enjolras was saying to the reporter--and it was no wonder they'd approached him for a statement, with his bright red coat and his striking eyes and the flush from the cold only accentuating his sharp cheekbones--and they'd hit the jackpot, because not only was Enjolras the picture of conventional beauty, but he was articulate and passionate and direct and could give one hell of a soundbite. "I'm a leader of a literacy activism group based in Rochester, but we're here in solidarity with the teachers of New York because we believe that the APPR system is a flawed and unjust system that ties teachers' livelihoods to factors outside their control.

"For example, Bossuet here--" he tugged on Bossuet's elbow (and Enjolras certainly knew how to play the system, because not  _only_ did Bossuet have gorgeous dark eyes and excellent bone structure, but it would be impossible for anyone to edit or spin this clip into a narrative of angry, violent protesters, not with the cheerfully bewildered smile Bossuet gave the reporter on finding himself unexpectedly face-to-face with a TV camera).

"Bossuet teaches Family and Consumer Sciences at a large urban high school," Enjolras said, "and his APPR score is going to be tied to the combined English/Language Arts test score for the entire building. Some of these kids don't even come into his room all year, and yet Bossuet's performance is being judged based on their scores on a standardized test. How does that make any sense at all?"

"The problem isn't teacher accountability itself, it's the way it's being implemented," Bossuet said. "We're just asking for a fair system that actually measures what we as teachers do, and not the effects of factors outside our control."

"That's perfect, thank you," the reporter said. She took down the spelling of their names, got a firm handshake from Enjolras, and then moved on to collect more statements, camera operator and sound people trailing behind her.

The sun was going down, and long streaks of orange light and dark shadow stretched across the plaza in front of the capitol. This was usually the time of day when everything seemed thin and slow and empty to Feuilly--but today, things felt sharply cold and real and alive and full of meaning.

Behind him, part of the crowd had picked up Jehan's slogan again and was chanting it in a stumbling unison, waving to the weekend evening traffic that was beginning to fill the street. There were so many people here, all working for the same purpose, all hopeful that if they joined together it would be enough, that their voices would be heard and the world would be changed. And Feuilly, looking around at these teachers and supporters from all across the state, all bundled up in winter coats and mittens and shouting out slogans together, believed it too.

You were never truly alone, if you wanted to change the world, he thought. There was always so much wrong, yes--but there were also other people who saw the bad things too, and wanted to do something about it. You just had to find them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the facts break down a bit. There WAS indeed a rally in Albany to protest the new APPR system. I can't remember *when* exactly it was but I think I just moved it to when I needed it to be for the story.
> 
> More importantly, I'm not sure about the details about the actual APPR evaluation system--because I'm just an education grad student right now, so I've learned a lot about literacy theory but not a lot about the nuts and bolts of the teaching profession. Enjolras's soundbyte at the protest is based on things I've heard others say, but I honestly can't guarantee it's true (Bahorel and Bossuet's info at the meeting, however, I am fairly confident in). I tried to look up the details but the system is quite complicated and bureaucratic and confusing (and did I mention I'm a grad student? so yeah, I don't really have the time to learn it all). So the takeaway is many people do have issues with the APPR system and they may or may not be the specific ones Enjolras highlights here.
> 
> ALSO! The sweet, talented Ve/ravenclawfeuilly made a fanmix for this fic which is absolute PERFECTION. I have been listening to it nonstop for the past two weeks, and I am so in love with it. Check it out!: http://8tracks.com/ve-laflamme/not-your-year


	8. Chapter 8

The day after the Albany rally, Feuilly slept in till eight-thirty. He ate a leisurely breakfast and spent the remainder of his morning planning for that week's class. In the afternoon, he went over some information he'd printed out about interpreter law, went for a run, and made a pot of soup that would give him dinners for the whole week. He spent the evening reading a book of poetry Jehan had recommended to him, surprised to find that the country's Poet Laureate wrote poems with mostly ordinary words, that (even though Feuilly assumed he was missing the deep meaning of the poetry) called up familiar images, and feelings Feuilly couldn't quite name.

Two days after the rally, Feuilly went in to the library early so he could get on the public computers to look up local interpreters and to see if he could find out anything about programs to provide uninsured people with glasses. When he logged in to his email, he found four messages from Enjolras. The first one, with the subject line, "WE MADE THE NEWS," contained only a string of exclamation marks and a link to a national news organization website where a clip about the rally featured Enjolras and Bossuet talking. The second and third had links to local news programs that had picked up the segment, one of which noted that the ABC Society was based in there Rochester. The fourth email was a more coherent thanks to everyone who had come to the rally, and several links to recommended follow-up reading from various news sites and political blogs.

Three days after the rally, the President had a press conference in which he talked about the issues raised by the rally organizers and called for congress to reconsider the nation's stance on teacher evaluation. By that night, all the news channels and radio programs were talking about education policy. Enjolras sent the group five different emails with various coverage of the issue over the course of the afternoon and evening, and when Feuilly checked his email after ESL class, he found one more email, this one just a long keysmash above a forwarded email from a local news channel that had picked up on the ABC Society's involvement in what was becoming a major national debate and wondered if anyone from the group would be available for an interview?

Five days after the rally, two different interviews with Bahorel and Bossuet aired on local news channels, and the area's largest newspaper did a feature on the group (buried on page 11 of the politics section, but still, it was exposure). Cosette and Combeferre were working hard to update the group's minimal website, which was getting twenty times its usual number of hits, to include all the new coverage and to give a more complete description of what the group actually did. The Senate majority leader released a statement declaring his party's dedication to justice in education, for both students and teachers ("inane verbiage but at least they're talking about it?" Bahorel said); the governor of New York, in a press conference, announced the creation of a new committee to evaluate the state's educational policy. There was an email chain about thirty messages long from various group members sharing links to new developments in the conversation, to blog posts and news stories and more local press for the ABC Society.

Nine days after the rally, Feuilly arrived early at work again (this time it was tenants' rights he needed to look up) and logged into his email to find a message from the director of the library letting him know that the Board of Directors had met that weekend and decided that they could not allow the ABC Society to continue meeting at the library.

"This is a public institution," she explained when Feuilly came to her office to ask what was going on, "and we can't let political groups meet here. I'm sorry; if we'd known at first the nature of the group, we probably wouldn't have said yes."

"The ABC Society isn't a political group," Feuilly protested, his skin crawling at the implication that they had somehow intentionally deceived the library, representing themselves as something they were not. "We're about literacy; that's not a partisan issue. We do participate in political action--petitions and so on--but we target all political parties, as outsiders from the politics game. It says it in our mission statement: We are officially politically neutral."

The director's lips pressed together. "Educational reform, and in particular the position you've taken on the teacher accountability issue, is a highly politicized issue right now. I'm not saying I don't personally side with you, but the fact is that right now, education _is_ a political issue--and with the publicity your participation in the rally has gotten, you're going to be recognized locally as a left-leaning political group. And the Board of Directors simply isn't comfortable with providing meeting space for a politically aligned group." She frowned at the frustration Feuilly couldn't keep off his face. "It's not a matter of the board disagreeing with you and not wanting to support you," she told him. "We are legally not allowed to host any political groups. The library is a public space, and thus politically neutral."

Feuilly bit back his objections of "You just don't _understand_!"; he'd been in enough arguments with teachers and foster parents and police officers to recognize the situation. The Board of Directors had all the power, he had none, and any attempt to communicate his point of view would be taken as disrespect. (As a teenager, when he'd had most of this kind of argument, he hadn't been smart enough to hold his tongue. Eventually, he'd learned.)

"Can we at least meet still this Wednesday?" he asked instead. "Or do we need to work something else out right away?"

The director hesitated. "We need to make this effective immediately," she said. "I'm sorry; I know it's an inconvenience."

 _She's my boss_ , Feuilly reminded himself, clenching his fists so hard his nails dug into the palms of his hands. "Okay, thank you," he said, and fled before he could say anything more.

Feuilly went back upstairs to clock in, still seething, and took a book cart back to do some shelving. As he automatically slotted cookbooks back into their spots on the shelves, his hot anger quickly faded, and a chill shook him as he realized how badly things might have gone if he'd said the things he wanted to. He could have lost his job. And losing his job meant defaulting on loans, destroying his credit, having to take whatever work he could find--the electronics store he'd worked at around the holidays, the grocery store, fast food. Not for the first time, he mentally thanked his eleventh-grade counselor for making him do the anger management group.

But it still was an awful situation--because it wasn't fair at all. And while Feuilly had long since given up on expecting anything like fairness from life, he didn't think many of the others in the group felt the same way.

The ABC Society members were middle-class; they were educated. They were used to--all right, not _fairness_ , life wasn't always fair for anyone--but they were used to people listening to them and valuing what they had to say. To them, getting kicked out of the library would be a battle to be fought--and why not? They had the tools to do it; they'd been doing the activism thing long enough to know how to tackle a little local injustice. And it'd be more publicity as well.

Feuilly stopped shelving and closed his eyes. He took a long, deep breath, trying to settle the sick feeling that gripped his stomach. What was he going to do? He couldn't keep working at the library if his friends were going to fight it. He couldn't quit and get a job in retail or something; the hours of quiet, stress-free work with books were what was keeping him together when the problems and demands of the ESL class mounted up. But he didn't think he could quit the ABC Society, either.

He could ask them not to fight it--and he was positive they would listen to him. They might try to convince him that it would be okay, but if he insisted, he was sure they'd agree quickly. But the image of himself begging, telling Joly he couldn't afford to quit his job and get another, pleading with Enjolras to understand what a bad situation this put him in . . . it turned Feuilly's stomach even more than the prospect of quitting.

There was really no good solution. But then, that was life, as Feuilly well knew by now.

He should have emailed Enjolras and Combeferre right away--it was their group, after all, their decision. But Enjolras was already planning to come by on Feuilly's lunch (or rather, the four-thirty break that counted as a lunch when you worked the evening shift) to talk about ideas for supporting local afterschool programs. So Feuilly put it off, for just a few more hours.

At four twenty-seven, Enjolras walked in with two coffees, leaning across the circulation desk to talk to Feuilly as he got his lunch bag out of the cabinet.

"It's actually gorgeous outside for once," he told Feuilly. "The sun's out, and, okay, it's still cold, it's going to be cold until May, but for once it's not _arctic_. How was your day?"

"It wasn't great," Feuilly shrugged. "I'll tell you later. Yours?"

"It was fine." Enjolras handed him the extra coffee as they walked down the stairs to the community room where Feuilly usually ate his lunch. "Hazelnut, I hope that's okay."

"Hazelnut is fine."

"So what happened today?" Enjolras asked as he closed the door to the room behind them. "If you want to talk about it, that is."

"Yeah, actually I _need_ to talk to you about it--it's ABC stuff."

"Okay." Enjolras sat across from Feuilly, folding his hands on the table.

"They're kicking us out," Feuilly said flatly. "They say we're too political, and the library has to be neutral since it's a public space."

Enjolras's eyes narrowed and he stood up quickly, his chair skidding back behind him. "What?"

"We don't even get this Wednesday."

"We--we--we're not a political group!" Enjolras spluttered. He waved his hands wildly, his gestures as incoherent as his speech. "How did they--but--did they even--ugh!" He pulled at his hair. "It's all the coverage from the rally, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's probably the first they've even paid attention to us." Feuilly sighed. "She acted like we'd been knowingly deceiving them for all these months, like I . . ."

Enjolras strode over to the door, then back to the table. "We _said_ in the video we're just there in solidarity; Combeferre has been editing the hell out of our mission statement--oh fuck, we posted all those political links--but they weren't _ours_ , we were just sharing coverage of the issue!" He paced back and forth in the narrow space between the table and the wall; Feuilly flinched as his voice rose. "We're a _literacy_ group, how can a _library_ throw out a literacy group, isn't that everything they're supposed to stand for? What hypocrites, what fucking selfish, pig-headed, _assholes_ , they should all--"

He stopped suddenly and turned to Feuilly, who was staring bleakly down at his sandwich. "Sorry, I--I'm just so _angry._ But you know I'm just getting my frustration out, right?"

He leaned on the table, his eyes earnest. "Obviously, we're going to do what they say, and we're not going to put up a fuss or post about it on the website or anything. It's fucking unfair--but whatever, this is your _job_ , we're not going to do anything that might risk that."

"I . . ." Feuilly's stomach unclenched a little. "I wasn't sure."

"Oh my god, Feuilly, we would never--we would _never_ do something that would put you in such a bad position."

Feuilly looked down at his hands, clenched on the table. He took a deep breath, forced his tense muscles to relax. "Thanks."

"We'll go quietly," Enjolras said firmly. He smiled grimly. "That is--I predict some very _loud_ rants in our apartment tonight. But I promise, we're not going to make any _public_ noise."

  


* * *

  


"Teacher, you read this for me?"

It was a question Feuilly had come to dread. Not that he didn't want his students bringing in written materials from outside of class--he couldn't think of a better way to use class time than looking at English that they needed to understand _today_. And it wasn't that he was intimidated the high-stakes charades game of finding a way to communicate abstract ideas with the couple of hundred words his students understood combined with whatever he could act out or draw (after successfully getting across "analyze," Feuilly wasn't afraid of any word). He was getting good at translating the difficult English or bills and form letters and colloquial notes into language that was easier to process.

But it was never _just_ reading. Anything his students brought in that needed to be read had a social situation attached to it that _also_ needed to be addressed. And it was starting to get overwhelming.

One week, Abdi brought in a note from his son's teacher, explaining, "My son have stay school, three o'clock, no two o'clock. I go school yesterday, ask why--I no understand; my son, he no understand, so he teacher write. Please, teacher, you read for me?"

The note read, _Feysal had detention this week because he has been calling other students "Bitch." This happened 3 times. We have talked about the word before, and Feysal understands that it is inappropriate, but he keeps using it._

Feuilly explained what had happened, and watched as Abdi's jaw tightened. "Thank you, teacher," he said. "I talk my son tonight."

"Was there no interpreter at the meeting?" Feuilly asked.

"No, nobody speak Somali," Abdi said, and Mako agreed.

Feuilly frowned. "They need to find someone. It's not right." He wondered if a letter to the school administration would do any good--and if so, who exactly it should be sent to. But surely they _knew_ they needed interpreters; maybe what Feuilly needed to do was find a good interpreter to recommend to them.

Another time, it was a letter from Mohammud's landlord warning him that his downstairs neighbors had once again complained of him walking around loudly in the middle of the night. This was the fourth complaint about the issue, and if it did not stop, Mohammud would be fined.

"I cannot--" Mohammud began, then turned to Abdi Mohammud and rattled off something quickly in Somali.

"He say he getting up in night because have to get ready for work," Abdi Mohammud explained. "With bus, he have to leave at four o'clock. He try explain landlord but he don't listen."

"Okay," Feuilly said. "I will write you a letter for your landlord and your neighbors, explaining that you are getting up to go to work, and I will tell you what to say to them." He made a mental note to look up local tenants' rights, to see if it was legal for the landlord to slap a fine on Mohammud.

And on it went. Feuilly was spending so much energy on all the _other_ parts of helping this group get by in the U.S., he had almost no time left for lesson planning. All his education textbooks--the ones he'd checked out of the library, the ones Jehan had taken out on his own account at the university library--sat in a pile on his kitchen table, buried under junk mail and bills and half-finished to-do lists; he hadn't touched them in weeks. He felt a tinge of guilt every time he sat down to eat at the table and saw them. (Fortunately, he was eating so few meals at his own table these days that he didn't have to see the books often.) He knew he still had so much to learn to be the teacher his students needed--but there was just no time.

Feuilly had nearly decided to hand over the actual English teaching to Marius, so that he could focus on the social work part of their involvement with the refugees, when Marius approached him after an ABC meeting and awkwardly cleared his throat.

"Um. About the English class," he began, fiddling with the napkin someone had left on Feuilly's table (they were back at the Musain again, for now). "I . . . think I have to step down for a while. I just have too much going on right now, and I'm getting--I have to cut something out. At least until the end of the semester. Sorry, I feel really bad." The napkin was in shreds by now. "I just, I have so much work for school, and--and other stuff going on."

Feuilly, who had not missed the deepening shadows under Marius's eyes, and had overheard Courfeyrac say something about "Ma--my friend" dealing with family troubles and possibly needing to find a place of his own for the summer, didn't pry. "That's fine," he said, trying to sound sincere. "I'm going to miss your help, of course. But your own education comes first."

Marius blushed for no apparent reason. "Thanks," he said. "If you want, I could try to find a replacement for me. There's a guy on my floor, Travis, he's doing a TESOL minor."

"That'd be great, if he's interested," Feuilly said. "I'll never say no to a little extra help."

"Okay, I'll ask him," Marius said. He flashed Feuilly a quick grin, then fled.

Travis, despite Marius's initial report that he'd seemed interested, never actually ended up contacting Feuilly. Feuilly wasn't really surprised. It was nearing the end of the semester, and all the college students would be struggling. Two weeks ago, Cosette had skipped an ABC meeting--the first time Feuilly could recall it ever happening--because she was pulling an all-nighter to get her honors project proposal together before the deadline; Eponine had started bringing her work to meetings, and would sit hunched over chemistry homework, furiously scribbling, until the very second Enjolras called the meeting to order. Travis was probably in the same situation as them--so Feuilly didn't blame him at all. As he'd told Marius, his own education came first.

But Feuilly was having a hard time keeping his own head above water. He and Marius had begun splitting the ESL class into a beginning and intermediate group, since a few of the students were still struggling with the basics, while others were absorbing more English by the day and were eager to move on. The arrangement had been working so well that it seemed like going back to one large group wouldn't help anybody, so Feuilly continued planning two lessons each week--only now he had to work in activities that the students in one group could do on their own while he worked with the other group, so that he could teach two classes at the same time. (He considered splitting the class entirely--but there wasn't time on Tuesdays to get in another class before the library closed, and he didn't have any other evenings free now that he'd picked his Friday night shift back up to try to make up for the effect of the winter's brutal heating bills on his meager attempt at a savings account.)

Then Bossuet's school did a professional development on supporting English Language Learners in the classroom, and Bossuet took an extra copy of every handout to give to Feuilly at the next ABC meeting. Some of the suggestions were common-sense, practical things that Feuilly was already doing, or would be doing if he had the resources. But there was also some theoretical information about things Feuilly had never considered before--the way patterns of discourse in classroom discussions positioned learners and teachers in different ways in relation to each other, for example--that made him wonder what else he had completely overlooked. Many of the pamphlets had a sources box at the end, and Feuilly started coming in early to the library to google the names and journals listed there. Most of them were behind paywalls or simply impossible to find, but he managed to get his hands on a few of them, and you could get a lot from the abstracts. What he read just confused and discouraged him. There was so much to know about how the brain actually learned language--and everybody seemed to be contradicting each other about it, one researcher saying input was the key to language acquisition, while another argued that it was all about output--and Feuilly didn't know about any of it. He wondered whether he should try again to convince his students to go to a different ESL class, one taught by somebody who actually know what they were doing. But he simply didn't have time to plan for his own class _and_ search for other classes in the area.

It was all starting to take a toll on Feuilly. He started getting headaches again. He was having trouble sleeping at night--and having almost as much trouble _staying_ _awake_ at work during the day. He ended up racking up $6.00 in fines on a library book simply because it'd been so long since he had the chance to read it that he'd forgotten he even had it.

While he was moving, it wasn't too bad--and he was always moving. There was always something to do, something to look up, somebody to call, somewhere to go, or a meal to eat quickly in the fifteen minutes before leaving for the next thing. If he ever stopped to think about how stressed he was, it wasn't so great.

One Wednesday, at the ABC Society meeting, Feuilly accidentally let himself think about it. The discussion that night was about the book the group was reading together, at Bahorel's suggestion, a thin paperback with a boring title and cover that--at least according to most of the group--belied the interesting contents. Usually, Feuilly tried to pay attention; since he had no time to actually read the book, the group's discussion was his only chance to learn what it said. But as Bahorel explained the section where the author looked at video games as an example of really effective systems for learning, Feuilly's mind wandered to everything he had to do.

Saado had limped into class the night before, explaining that there had been an accident at the factory where she worked and she had hurt her foot. It had come out that she hadn't actually seen a doctor, because the one her company's workers' comp had selected was male. It had never occurred to Feuilly to be anything but grateful that he'd never had to deal with workers' comp; now he almost wished he'd had to at some point, because then he would know where to even begin with tackling this mess.

And the healthcare issue reminded him that he still needed to look at the information he'd picked up at the community health fair two weeks ago; he'd come home with a whole stack of pamphlets, and most of it was probably irrelevant to his students, but there was a chance there might be some gem in there that would be worth the time. There were probably screenings that some of his students--the women, perhaps, or the older men--should be getting that Feuilly wasn't aware of, being from a different demographic. Of course, paying for those screenings was another challenge, so events like the health fair that offered some free services were a big help--but tracking them down could be difficult.

And taxes were due in just two weeks. Feuilly hadn't begun his own yet--and this year, he would basically have six extra sets of taxes to file, as well. Saahid had brought a pamphlet offering tax preparation services in to class for Feuilly to read; the thing had looked very suspect, but Feuilly had had a terribly hard time convincing Saahid it was a scam and he should not go to this person. So it was looking like Feuilly might need to offer a tax preparation workshop as well. Charades skills aside, the thought of trying to explain "itemized deduction" to even the most advanced of his students was enough to make him want to lie down and give up.

Feuilly's chest was tight, and another headache was threatening at his temples. He forced himself to stop and take a slow, deliberate breath. He would take everything one thing at a time, he told himself. He could do this. It wasn't going to be like last winter--going home every night on the edge of tears, walking out of a meeting because he suddenly just couldn't handle everything, breaking down in the line at McDonalds. He was not the same useless person. He had a handle on things, and he was going to do something worthwhile with his life--and right now, he was going to do that by paying attention to why video games are what school learning ought to be like.

After the meeting, as Feuilly waited for Bahorel (his ride, tonight) to finish chatting with Courfeyrac and Bossuet, Combeferre slipped into the seat next to Feuilly.

"Is everything okay?" he asked quietly. "You seem really stressed."

To Feuilly's horror, a lump rose in his throat when he tried to answer. He coughed to clear his throat (and then told himself the tears pricking the corners of his eyes were from coughing). "No, I'm fine," he told Combeferre. "I'm just tired. It's been a long week."

"It's only Wednesday," Combeferre pointed out, and Feuilly wasn't sure what to say to that, because really, he had a point. "You're working really hard lately."

Feuilly shrugged. "There's a lot to do."

"Still, it's not good to work all the time; everybody needs a break now and then. Enjolras and I are going hiking this weekend--either Saturday or Sunday, we haven't decided for sure when yet. You should join us."

"It sounds like fun," Feuilly said. "But I probably should pass. I haven't had a free weekend in weeks, and I _really_ need to clean and do laundry.

"Okay," Combeferre said. "But text me if you change your mind. Or if--if anything."

Two days later, Feuilly helped close up the library, and then walked home in the dark. It was nice weather for walking, finally, but he was so tired it was hard to enjoy the warmer temperatures. All he could think about was getting to his apartment and going to sleep. He felt so drained.

It was a Friday night, and all up and down the main street, the restaurants and bars were full of people--groups of young people dancing or holding shouted conversations in bars, older couples sharing desserts in brightly lit windows, young couples lingering on restaurant patios sipping drinks. Feuilly, trudging along from streetlamp to streetlamp, felt like a different creature entirely from them.

Then he turned onto the sidestreet and everything was quiet in the falling night; the yards and driveways still and empty, the houses lit up brightly. A few curtains were left open and Feuilly could catch glimpses inside of little snapshots of ordinary life--a family sitting down around a birthday cake, a middle-aged couple reading in their living room, children playing--and it was like looking into another world. He was twenty-five. What was he doing, walking home to an empty apartment at nine o'clock, exhausted beyond words?

Feuilly suddenly felt very strange and cold. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the contact list, rememberring the time he'd called Combeferre on Christmas. It would be nice to talk to him, just to hear the voice of a person who cared about him to remind himself that he wasn't as adrift and tetherless as he felt. His thumb hovered over Combeferre's name.

But he stopped. As weird as he felt at the moment, as tired as he was, he was determined to be better, to keep it together on his own.

He turned the phone off, slipped it into his pocket, and walked a little faster, promising himself hot chocolate to warm up with when he got home--or, if the hot chocolate was all gone, tea with honey. And then he would go to bed by ten, Friday night treat, and everything would be a little better in the morning.

He wasn't ready to give up yet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Is Feuilly Reading: At the beginning of this chapter, Feuilly is reading the poetry of Billy Collins (specifically, Aimless Love: A Selection of Poems). The book the ABC group is working through together is Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling, by James Paul Gee, which I read for a class this summer and which is fantastic and interesting and quite readable. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, you might give it a try!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Thank you to everyone who has commented or liked or reblogged or simply read my story; I am so grateful for you all! <3
> 
> I just want to remind you that this fic does have a warning for mentions of child abuse--and this chapter and the next are what that warning applies to. There aren't any graphic descriptions or anything (in my opinion), but if this kind of thing is troubling to you, please be cautious! Thank you!

Feuilly's Tuesday was going well, for once. He'd gone to bed on time the night before and had a good night's sleep. It was warm enough to go for a quick walk around the block on his lunch. He was ready for class, with a well-planned lesson that incorporated a few of the ideas he'd read about in his research. Sitting down in the meeting room at six fifty-five, he had a sudden urge to knock on the wooden table--just in case this day was too good to be true.

Saahid and Mohammud--the youngest and oldest students--were the first to arrive, and Feuilly sat and chatted with them as they waited for the others. Mohammud, as usual, didn't get much past telling Feuilly that yes, his day was good; yes, he had to work tonight; yes, work was okay.

"Too much working, teacher," he said. "Very tired."

That reminded Saahid of an incident that had happened the week before at the warehouse where he worked; he tried to explain it to Feuilly, and though the details were fuzzy, Feuilly eventually understood that there had been some kind of problem or accident and the supervisor had made the two Somali workers clean up in the aftermath and let the Hispanic workers off the hook.

"Teacher, how I tell him why you only me and him work, why not everybody work?" Saahid asked.

"What you just said was okay," Feuilly told him. "I understood you just fine."

"I say that, teacher, but he not understand," Saahid lamented. "Or maybe he understand but he say no understand. How I tell him with good English?"

Feuilly wrote out a few sentences on the board for him, and Saahid practiced them until he was comfortable with the words.

"It happen again, I tell him," he resolved, copying the sentences into his battered notebook. "'That's not fair.'"

Abdi, Mako, and Saado arrived while Saahid was finishing up, and Feuilly could tell at once that something was up. Abdi was holding back his smile, as if it would split his face open if he let it, and the women, usually so solemn and stonelike, were grinning too.

"Teacher, good news!" Abdi announced. "My cousin, we find him!"

"Your cousin? You mean . . ." Feuilly racked his brain for any cousins in the local family structure that he was aware of. "You mean Saahid?"

"No, teacher, my cousin in my country, in Somalia, he--one way; me--different way." Abdi gestured the splitting up of the family with his hands, then shook his head sadly. "I don't know where he is two, maybe three year." Feuilly nodded; he didn't know all the details, but the students had sketched out some of their story for him, and he knew they'd completely lost touch with a lot of family members in the unrest in their home country, coming to the U.S. not knowing if those people were dead or alive. Abdi continued, "Now, he in United States, Kansas!"

"We find in computer, in website for Somali people," Mako added. "Feysal, he tell us."

"Wait, you lost him in Somalia three years ago, and then you found him in Kansas this week?" Feuilly gaped.

"Yes, yes, in Kansas. He live in Topeka," Abdi continued. "Very bad city, almost no Somali people. I say, my brother, come to Rochester, is very good city. He say, two weeks, I come, my wife, my daughters. Find for me a house, my brother!"

"That's . . . that's great," Feuilly said, doing his best to smile. "That's very good news. I'm really happy for you." But what he was thinking was: _Great. Another newcomer to take care of. Another family to get services for._

Then he realized what he was thinking. Here his student was, telling him how--against all odds--he had re-located a family member who by rights should have been lost forever among the seven billion people in the world. How, thanks to an online chatroom, this man and his family were being reunited with their relatives, how they would be able to live near some of their own and the world would maybe seem a slightly less hostile place for this little family. It was a story of success and resilience and hope in the most unlikely places--and what was Feuilly thinking about? The extra work it would cause him.

It was happening again.

He'd tried to hold it together, to keep his issues and his stress in check so that he could continue to work hard for the people who needed him. There were only a few people this time; he'd thought it wouldn't be too much. But here he was, falling into the same old patterns.

Feuilly went through the class in a blur, grateful for his careful lesson plan because it meant he could blunder through without really thinking; he could follow the flow of the activities down the paper, robot-like, run the whole class automatically, without processing any of it. It was probably a horrible lesson, he realized distantly, and he tried to focus on what he was doing in the present moment. But it was a losing battle.

  


* * *

  


_January, 2012._

Feuilly isn't doing well. He has major court cases for three of his kids this month; one of his foster families suddenly decided they can't handle the pressure of foster care anymore; and his desk is hidden under the paperwork for his new cases. They always get a flood of referrals every January--nobody wants to call Child Protective Services around Christmas time, so they hold off and report the situations after the holidays--and this year it's worse than usual. Feuilly was already at a full caseload, and now he has six new cases on top of that. Every department at Children and Youth is understaffed and it's taking forever to get new hires in, but kids are still being neglected and abused at the same rates as always, so there's nothing to do but keep raising the top limit of a "full" caseload.

The added paperwork is bad, but the stories in the files that come across Feuilly's desk are worse. A boy with several severe burns up each arm who won't talk about what happened. A little girl who doesn't know what a grocery store looks like because her parents kept her locked in the basement for religious reasons. A teenager who was beaten for months for being gay. An infant beginning life by going through withdrawal from the drugs her mother used. A little boy who started trying to touch his little sister after his _foster_ _dad_ abused him. Sometimes, when he's working late nights at the office, Feuilly has to stop in the middle of his paperwork to put his head down on the desk and cry.

Feuilly _tries_ to give every child the support they need. He works late nights, he takes calls on the weekends, he always keeps a suit in his car in case of emergency meetings and visits. He testifies in court and finds himself rambling; he clenches his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep his focus because his kids _need_ his testimony to be clear and persuasive. He spends sleepless nights tossing and turning, unable to shut his brain off from thinking about all the things he needs to do and all the things he can't fix.

One night, he's on his way home from the hospital, having been there all evening--from five o'clock until well after dark--sitting with two of his kids in the surgery waiting room while the doctors tried to save their mother's life. This was the first time she'd tried to kill herself, but it was the culmination of a long spiral of depression that was the reason her sons were taken away, with their father dead and their mother too shattered by her mental illness to cook for her boys or take them to their doctor's appointments. The boys hadn't talked much, but Feuilly could tell they were terrified that this was their fault, that if they'd only been better somehow, their mother would be fine. He told them it wasn't, but he doesn't think it did any good. So he sat with them in the pale green room and pretended not to notice when the younger boy slipped his hand into his older brother's, when the older boy kept wiping his eyes with the cuff of his sweatshirt sleeve. After three hours, the surgeon came back out to tell the boys that they still have a mother.

It's ten-thirty when Feuilly finally leaves the hospital, and it's a forty-minute drive home, and he has court at nine the next morning. He's fifteen minutes into the drive when he realizes that he never ate dinner and his lunch was a granola bar and an apple, and that it isn't just stress making his hands shake. He pulls off the highway at the next exit and into the McDonald's parking lot.

It's crowded inside, unusual for so late at night, in an area so quiet that even the fast food closes at eleven. The line seems to be mostly high schoolers, country kids who make their own fun at the gas stations and fast food restaurants that are the only public places where they can see each other outside of school. The restaurant is loud with their chatter and laughter; the workers all seem to know them, probably go to school with them, and people are calling back and forth across the room. Feuilly shoves his hands deep in his coat pockets and shuffles silently forward in the line.

He's ordering a #5 with a drink and fries, when it suddenly hits him, like a fist to the stomach, how strange it all is. He's ordering a combo meal; the room is full of high schoolers drinking milkshakes and arguing about marching band; the cashier taking his order is asking him what size drink he wants. All of it feels unreal.

And all of a sudden, he's crying. The tears well up out of nowhere, running down his cheeks, choking him. He mutters something without even knowing what he says, and pushes through the line and out into the brightly lit parking lot--and the safety of his car, where he can break down in private, sobbing helplessly over his steering wheel, trying to pull himself together enough to drive the rest of the way home. He feels so broken, so fucked up inside, it's hard to imagine feeling okay again. Getting home in one piece is all that feels within reach at the moment.

The weeks pass. Somewhere along the way, he learns to operate on autopilot. He learns to turn his brain off when the cases get too horrible; when the work builds up and there is more to do than three Feuillys could handle, he hunches up his shoulders and plods on through, doing what he can and learning to shrug off what is left undone. He learns to stop caring _quite_ so much.

The months pass, and Feuilly barely notices. He's still overworked and overstressed and sleep deprived, but maybe he's gotten used to it, because it doesn't bother him as much anymore. He feels like he's living in a fog, rolling along a road that's always unfamiliar and always the same. When the weather turns warm and sunny and the mornings are noisy with the chirping of birds, it seems unreal, like the background noise in a video game, the same thirty-second clip of birdsong on endless repeat.

It's late April when what he's doing hits him. He's in the middle of a visit with one of his kids, a quiet eleven-year-old whose reaction to being hit by his mother's boyfriend (and possibly more, but the kid isn't saying anything) has been to try desperately, pathetically, to please every single adult who walks into his life. So he's an easy case. His teachers love him, his coaches love him, his other caseworkers love him, his foster parents are ready to adopt as soon as parental rights are terminated, and this kid is walking around with the scars of his past still festering inside, a ticking time bomb of unaddressed hurt and confusion.

But he hasn't done anything _yet_ , so he's an easy case.

It's only after he's finished the visit, waved goodbye to the boy (standing smiling on the porch of his wonderful foster home, his hair cut neatly, brand-new sneakers on his feet), and pulled out of the driveway that Feuilly realizes what he's doing. He _knows_ there's stuff this child hasn't dealt with, things that are hurting him inside that he doesn't know how to bring up to the adults in his life. He can see it in the twitch of his hands when Feuilly reaches across the table to hand him a book he brought him, in the lips pressed together around a secret when they talk. But he hasn't done anything about it, because nothing horrible has happened because of it _yet_ , and he's so busy with everything else, and it's just _easier_ to leave it be.

He's coasting, driving without really seeing the road. And that's the worst thing he can do, as a social worker, as the _one person_ that some of these kids have in their lives to notice things, to speak up for them. They're relying on him to be their advocate, to take care of them, to make sure they get everything their parents couldn't give them. And he's shut his brain off, because everything was too much and he couldn't handle it, and he's going through the motions of overseeing their cases--their lives--robotically, without really seeing them, without really caring.

Just like every one of the jaded, burnt-out caseworkers who handled Feuilly's own file from the time he was six until nearly ten years later.

Feuilly has to pull over to the side of the road to throw up.

He calls in sick the next day (missing court, missing a parent-teacher conference, missing a meeting with a biological mom who just checked herself into rehab two weeks ago--there is always something to miss), even though after that first, gut-wrenching realization he feels little more than fatalistic acceptance. It was bound to happen; the only surprising thing was that he hadn't noticed it sooner. He spends the day lying on his couch in front of the TV he isn't watching. His phone buzzes from time to time with texts from his coworkers, but he doesn't answer it.

He has to decide what to do next. And there is no good answer.

If he goes on like he's been doing, he'll be screwing his kids over with this limp simulacrum of social work; for all that he's going through the motions, he won't _really_ be taking care of them. If he quits, he abandons them--kids who have already seen way too many people walk out of their lives (or seen them pulled out by the government). And it happens all too often; caseworkers who care too much get burnt out and they pick up and switch to marriage counseling, leaving their kids wondering if _everyone_ who cares about them is going to leave. If there's something wrong with _them_ that causes people to go.

It's a devil's game, a vicious catch-22. Leave your kids and betray them; stay and deprive them. It's your choice: Do you want to hurt these children through abandonment or through neglect?

In the end, it comes down to this: If Feuilly leaves, there's a 1 in 100 chance that a few of his kids will get a good caseworker, someone who cares about them and has the strength to fight for them and to make sure they get what they need, and to stay in it for the long haul. They're terrible odds, but they're better than what they'll have if he stays--a guarantee of a shitty caseworker who can't get himself together enough to care the way he's supposed to. Feuilly's kids deserve better than him.

And Feuilly is so tired. And, in a way, it comes down to this as well.

  


* * *

  


_April, 2013._

"Feuilly. _Feuilly._ " It sounded the way someone sounds when they're saying your name for the third or fourth time, and Feuilly started and looked around for whoever was addressing him. Enjolras stood there in the aisle between Manufacturing (670-688) and Architecture (720-729) in his stocking feet, grinning.

"Why . . . what are you doing here?" Feuilly asked. He looked down at the date on his phone. (Not that it made any sense to do so; of course it was Tuesday, he'd just taught ESL class, and besides, Enjolras didn't come to the library on Wednesdays anymore, now that they'd kicked the ABC Society out.) But still: "It's Tuesday," he said numbly.

"It's thunderstorming," Enjolras explained. "We came by to give you a ride. Just a second, we need to pack up out stuff. You're out early today, aren't you?"

Feuilly checked his phone again, having already forgotten the time he'd read off the screen. "I guess so."

He tried to pull himself back to normalcy as he followed Enjolras around the corner to the table where Combeferre was systematically packing his books back into a messenger bag. Enjolras got down on hands and knees to fish his shoes out from underneath the table as Combeferre greeted Feuilly.

"How was class?"

"Um--it was fine." Feuilly didn't remember what they'd done in class.

When he didn't say anything else, Combeferre asked, "Did you get the stuff with the worker's comp straightened out?"

"We're, um, working on it," Feuilly said. He had convinced Saado to see a doctor, and he'd called the company several times on her behalf, trying to get someone in HR to talk to him. "I left a lot of messages. I forgot to ask her if she's heard anything more." He rubbed his eyes. He just wanted to get out of here, to get home where he didn't have to keep it together anymore. "How . . . how was studying?"

A brief frown crossed Combeferre's face, but he launched willingly into a description of the book he was reading, a sort of scholarly memoir ("autoethnography," Combeferre called it, and Feuilly was too tired to ask for a definition) about a black man who went to a predominantly white school as a child.

"It's fascinating--and horrifying--the way this young, young kid instantly understands that his culture and way of speaking aren't welcome in the school; he even introduces himself by a different name than what he goes by at home," Combeferre said as they walked toward the exit together. "He's really skillful at fitting in, changing the way he talks to fit the culture of the school, but there's a huge cost as far as the effect this kind of bifurcation has on his identity. It's really interesting; it's a lot of the same ideas the Gee book we read for the ABC Society talked about, but it shows how these things can play out in the life of a real individual."

Feuilly let the description wash over him, listening just enough to nod and mumble responses at the appropriate times. Just a few more minutes, he told himself, and he'd be home, and alone. And then . . . he didn't know what.

It was indeed thunderstorming with a vengeance, the rain coming down in thick sheets, and they dashed through it to Enjolras's car and clambered in. Enjolras's teeth were chattering as he started the engine--it took him about ten seconds to get cold when he was wet--and Feuilly's hair and face were dripping with rainwater. He leaned back against the headrest of the passenger seat, taking a deep breath.

"Feuilly, is everything okay?" Combeferre asked from the backseat.

Feuilly shrugged. His stomach was churning and he was trying not to think at all, because thinking about everything just made it worse.

"You seem upset," Enjolras agreed. "Did something happen?"

Feuilly shrugged again, and made a vague noise that sounded a lot more plaintive than he'd intended.

"Why don't we grab some dinner?" Combeferre suggesed. "Maybe talking about it will help--or if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but it seems like you could use a break."

"That Vietnamese place downtown is open until ten," Enjolras said. "The one Grantaire likes? It looks sketchy but it's really pretty good. Do you like pho, Feuilly?" He was so cheery, so casually sure everything could be fixed by a bowl of noodle soup; it grated on Feuilly's nerves.

"Look, I don't have time or money to eat out on weeknights!" he said, and it came out much louder and sharper than he'd expected. "Sorry," he muttered in the startled silence that followed, and stared furiously out the window at the downpour so they wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. He knew he should apologize more fully, make his excuses--he was just stressed, he hadn't slept well the night before, work had been exhausting--but he was afraid if he opened his mouth he would just start crying in earnest.

Enjolras touched his shoulder gently, and Feuilly jumped. "Something seems really wrong," he said softly. He paused, and Feuilly didn't nod, but he didn't deny it, either. Enjolras's hand squeezed his shoulder. "Let us--well . . . what can we do to help you?" he asked. "If you need to be alone, that's fine--but if you want someone to talk to, or just someone to be with, we'd really like to help."

Feuilly wanted _so badly_ to say yes, to give in and break down and pour out all his issues to somebody. But--but he'd tried so hard to be self-sufficient, to get through on his own. He'd tried so hard to be the kind of person his students needed. He blinked, and a tear spilled over and ran down his cheek.

 _What the hell_ , he thought. _It's a losing battle. I've already fucked it all up; it's clear I'm never going to manage to be a functional, useful human being. What does it matter if I give up now?_

Enjolras was still waiting for his answer. Feuilly sighed. "Sure, yeah," he mumbled.

Enjolras put the car into gear. "Your place or ours?"

"Yours is fine."

During the short drive to Enjolras and Combeferre's downtown apartment, Feuilly sat in silence, slowly getting a grip on himself while the two of them talked about whether or not the heavy rain of the last few days might cause the river to flood again. They carried on the casual conversation as they parked in the garage and rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, telling Feuilly about the flooding the year before, when the spring melt combined with heavy rains to send the river up to a twenty-year record level. It was obviously a placeholder conversation, but it filled up the silence, and Feuilly was grateful.

When they got inside, Enjolras disappeared into his bedroom to put away his things, while Combeferre ushered Feuilly inside, doing all the good host things like offering him something to drink and telling him to make himself at home and clearing clutter off the couches to give him somewhere to sit; Feuilly answered numbly, his heart beating in his ears. When Enjolras emerged, having exchanged his damp shoes and socks for a pair of fluffy slippers, Combeferre stepped out to his room to change.

"Feuilly, have you had dinner yet?" Enjolras asked, leaning against the doorframe between the living room and kitchen, a takeout menu in hand. "Combeferre and I haven't, and I'm going to order Thai. Can I get something for you?"

"No, I didn't have dinner," Feuilly answered automatically, then realized that eating was about the last thing he wanted to do. "But I'm not really hungry," he added.

"How about I get an extra order of pad thai, and if you decide you don't want it, we'll have it as leftovers," Enjolras decided. "You're not allergic to peanuts or seafood, are you?"

He quickly placed the order (from the half of the conversation Feuilly could hear, it was clear he and Combeferre were regular customers); Combeferre returned, having exchanged his button-down shirt for a comfortable sweater. The three of them sat in the living room, listening to the rain on the window.

"Do you want to talk about what's going on?" Combeferre asked very softly.

Feuilly shut his eyes and nodded.

But then he found he didn't know how to start--how did you start telling a friend (no, acquaintance--no, _friend_ , but one who's never seen this part of you) about how fucked up you were? He almost changed his mind; he opened his mouth to tell them he didn't want to talk about it after all, that he was just tired or stressed or coming down with something, that he wanted to go home and be alone. He closed his mouth without saying anything.

Combeferre sat silently, waiting, his eyes resting on Feuilly patiently. Enjolras leaned forward and put a hand on Feuilly's knee.

"Tell us," he said.

And Feuilly started to talk.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feuilly isn't reading anything in this chapter, but the book Combeferre recommends to him is Voices of the Self, by Keith Gilyard. It's a great book for anyone interested in the kinds of things the Amis have been discussing in this fic--Gilyard's experiences are memorable and thought-provoking, and add complexity to the issues.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, the warning for mentions of child abuse and depictions of child neglect applies heavily in this chapter.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

_1991._

Feuilly lives in a big house with a sagging porch and flaking pink paint. The house has lots of rooms--more than how high Feuilly knows how to count--and they are filled with old furniture and boxes full of old dusty cassette tapes and lamps that don't work. It's the kind of house that lots of people are always going in and out of. Some of them are friends, and they stay a long time and sometimes sleep on the couches (the brown one with stuffing coming out of the back is the softest, but the blue one with flowers is longer, and the tall guys like it better); others are there for business, and they go down to the basement to talk to Tío Alonso or up to Joella's bedroom and usually don't stay too long. Then there are people who live there, like Feuilly and Tío Alonso and Joella and Tía Felícia and Dí and the other kids; and finally, there is Tío Edhino, who sits in the big orange-red chair in the living room smoking, and who owns the house.

Tío Edhino is not really Feuilly's tío. Feuilly knows this because people laugh at him when he calls him that. People don't laugh when he calls Tío Alonso "Tío," but Feuilly doesn't know if that means he's really his tío or if it just means he's less important than Tío Edhino and so they don't care. He calls the other people in the house his primos and primas, and they call each other "mihijo" and "abuelo" and "puta" and other things that Feuilly doesn't understand. There are so many things that Feuilly doesn't understand, but he thinks that's probably normal. He's only four years old, or maybe five.

Most nights, Feuilly sleeps in the bedroom at the very top of the stairs, with Dí and Ademir and Jona and sometimes other boys and girls on a big, yellow-stained mattress on the floor. It can get very hot there, right up under the sloping roof, and sometimes in summer he takes a blanket off the couch and sleeps in the backyard under the bush with the big droopy flowers. There are two dogs that live at the house too, and they sometimes curl up next to him as he drifts off watching the fireflies dance among the weeds.

Sometimes, if he's been out playing in the neighborhood very late, the front door of the house is locked when he gets home; usually he can get in through the kitchen door when this happens, because the lock on that door isn't very good and it's pretty easy to get it open. If it takes a long time, or if someone inside yells at him for making so much noise, Feuilly will sleep in the backyard or go to the brown house down on the corner where the door is never locked. But things are very noisy in the brown house, and sometimes there are weird guys there who say things Feuilly doesn't understand, so if it's warm and not raining he'll just sleep in the yard.

Sometimes there's a lot of food in the house. When people are happy and there's a party, it's easy to get plenty to eat, and sometimes the Tías pinch Feuilly's cheeks and fill up his plate again and again with arroz con pollo, yellow rice with little bits of chicken and little wrinkly gray-green peas and little square carrots all through it, and Feuilly eats until his tummy is tight and round. Other times, there isn't much, just a fridge full of tupperware containers with food that's fuzzy and smells bad, and maybe a package of stale potato chips or pretzels in the back of a cupboard. When it's like that, the girls go over to their friends' houses to eat--they're bigger than Feuilly and they go to school. Jona and Dí's mama, Tía Felícia, brings home happy meals for them, and Ademir's mama, who is Joella, takes him out to somewhere to eat. Tío Alonso doesn't bring home food for Feuilly, but if he got KFC sometimes he lets Feuilly have a piece. Other times he gets mad and swats his hand away. Then Feuilly eats old pretzels, or nothing at all.

The TV is always going in the living room, and where there aren't too many visitors in there, Feuilly watches it. The houses on the TV look very different from the one he lives in; they are cleaner, newer, and fewer people live in them. But that's because it's TV, isn't it? There's also alien movies and talking animals on the TV, and, on Saturday mornings when nobody is up but the kids, Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob Squarepants is silly, and he's Feuilly's favorite of all the pretend things on the TV.

It's the middle of winter when some gringos with clipboards come to the house and look around. Tío Edhino yells at the guys; Tía Felícia takes Dí and Jona out, loudly announcing that they're going to visit her mother. Feuilly assumes the gringos are here about drugs--they look kind of like the detectives he's seen on the TV--but of course he knows better than to tell them anything. Luckily, although the gringo who speaks some Spanish spends a long time talking to him (Silly, why do they think he knows about the drugs? They'd be much better off asking Tío Alonso.), most of the questions are safe ones--things about where he sleeps, what he eats, who takes care of him when he's sick, does he go to school? Feuilly can answer those questions without giving anything away.

When the gringos have finished looking around, one of them squats down on the kitchen floor in front of Feuilly and tells him he needs to go with them. Feuilly is confused, but none of the grown-ups in the house seem to mind when the gringos take him by the hand and lead him out, so he figures it's all right.

It's not until he's strapped into the backseat of a car, watching the only home he knows disappear behind them through a curtain of falling snow, that he panics.

Maybe Tío Alonso doesn't care. Maybe he wants Feuilly gone so he doesn't have to share his KFC anymore. Feuilly's never gone been far away from home, not by himself, not in a car with gringos like this. How is he going to find his way back?

Too scared to talk, Feuilly starts to scream, struggling against the seatbelt, ignoring the efforts of the gringos to comfort him as the car turns a corner and the shabby pink house is lost to view.

 

* * *

 

In a big shiny building downtown, with long blue-white lights and lots of people in suits working in gray boxes like on the TV, Feuilly meets Daniela. She gives him a juice box and crackers shaped like fish and takes him to a room with some toys and asks him a lot of questions. Feuilly doesn't understand some of the questions (What does she mean, does he know where his mamá is? Dí and Jona have a mamá, and so does Ademir; Feuilly doesn't have one.), but he likes the crackers. And he likes the way Daniela talks to him, like he really matters.

Daniela explains things to Feuilly slowly over the next few days. Little kids are supposed to have grown-ups to take care of them, she tells him. It isn't okay for little kids to have to sleep outside in the bushes. It isn't okay for little kids to eat stale crackers for dinner if the grownups have food, or to get locked out of the house at night because nobody notices that they aren't home yet. That's why he had to leave Tío Alonso's house.

He's going to stay with the Pattersons for a few days, in a nice house with his own bedroom and new pajamas, which are clothes for going to sleep in, and lots of toys to play with. Then he's going to go live with a new family--who Daniela is picking out very carefully for him--and they are going to take care of him. Families like this, who take care of little kids who had to leave the homes they were living in, are called _foster families_. When he goes to live with the foster mom and dad, they will tell him what he should call them. Yes, he can take his new pajamas. No, they won't have the same toys as the Pattersons, but there will be other toys to play with. Yes, he will go to kindergarten next year like Dí. No, he isn't going to go back to the pink house.

It's Daniela who sits next to Feuilly when they go to court and a man in a big black dress who smiles at Feuilly but then talks to him very seriously about Tío Alonso and Tío Edhino and the other grown-ups in the pink house. It's Daniela who takes Feuilly to meet his new foster parents, the Walkers, and stops for ice cream on the way there, buying Feuilly a big cone, strawberry with sprinkles. It's Daniela who helps Feuilly pick May 5 (because it's five-five, and he's turning five) for his birthday when they can't find any of his papers and don't know when his real birthday was.

During a visit with Daniela--he sees her every two weeks, and sometimes they play in his room at the Walkers' house and sometimes they go out for a treat or to play in the park--Feuilly casually says something about Mr. Walker (Uncle Joe, he's supposed to call him, but he always forgets) locking him in his room without supper, and Daniela's face gets really weird and serious. She asks him if that happens a lot, and then there are more questions and he can tell she's trying not to let him see that she's angry; his stomach suddenly feels like a cold hand is squeezing it, and he's so scared he starts to cry, because these quiet, angry-sounding questions are exactly like when he was first taken away from the pink house.

Daniela's mouth makes a little O, and she scoops Feuilly up into her lap right away. She strokes his hair and tells him it's okay, she's going to take care of him. He's going to leave the Walkers' house, she says, and go to a different foster family, where the parents will always let him eat dinner. She explains that locking kids in their rooms and spanking them with spoons are more of the things that aren't okay, and if anybody ever does stuff like this to Feuilly, he should tell her.

"I'm sorry," Feuilly whimpers into her shoulder, starting to cry again. "I didn't know."

"It's okay--it's not your fault," she assures him, stroking his hair. "It's not your fault for not knowing to tell me, because nobody ever explained to you what is okay and what isn't. And it's not your fault the grownups did those things. It's their fault, sweetie, never yours."

Feuilly nods, sniffling. "Will I have to have a new caseworker?" he asks. "Because I'm going to a new foster home?"

"No way," Daniela says. "You're with me no matter what foster home you're in. It doesn't matter how many times you move around, I'll still be there."

Feuilly spends a week with the Larsons, another family that does interim foster care, before getting placed with the Ewells, who have three dogs and two little boys and a swimming pool in the backyard where Feuilly can learn to swim when it gets hot out. Things are better there than with the Walkers, and things are good all summer long. And in the fall, Feuilly starts kindergarten, and he is so busy with making new friends and learning to read and practicing running so he can be the fastest one when they race at recess, that if Daniela looks a little tired sometimes or gets distracted during their visits, he doesn't notice. She's still there every two weeks, pulling up the Ewells's driveway in her purple car, and she still smiles every time she sees him. So everything is okay.

Then it's December, and Daniela is gone, without warning.

She got too tired, explains Feuilly's new caseworker, a heavyset man (who doesn't speak any Spanish, but it's okay because Feuilly is learning so much English with the Ewells and at school that they can talk in English, right?). It wasn't anything about the kids, she was just working too hard. She was sorry she didn't get to say goodbye, but she wrote Feuilly a letter.

Feuilly doesn't read the letter right then. He folds it up and crams it in the back pocket of his jeans. He ignores the new caseworker when he asks if Feuilly wants help reading it. The man waits for a minute, then shrugs and asks how Feuilly is getting along with his foster brothers.

That night, Feuilly sits alone in the living room, in front of the fire. (The Ewells have a wood stove to heat the downstairs of their house, and although it isn't really cold enough to need it yet, they've built a fire in it the past few nights anyway because they say it just feels so Christmassy.) Feuilly takes the letter out of his pocket and turns it over and over in his hands, wondering what it says inside, if it explains why Daniela left, if it has a clue to how long until the new caseworker leaves or until Feuilly has to leave the Ewells. If it tells whether quitting on kids is another of the things that isn't okay.

Without quite knowing why, he opens the wood stove and throws the letter in. The paper turns brown and then bursts into hot yellow flame, and Feuilly starts to cry because he's changed his mind, he wants the letter back--but it's too late now. He's ruined it, and it's gone for good.

That winter is when he starts getting into fights.

 

* * *

 

_April, 2013._

Feuilly didn't know why he was talking about Daniela. He hadn't intended to spill out his entire life story for Enjolras and Combeferre; he'd meant to tell them about what happened at ESL class, maybe a little about the year before, and stop there. But once he started talking, he couldn't stop. He told them about being a caseworker, about falling apart in the middle of McDonalds, about abandoning his kids because he couldn't handle the stress of caring about them the way he should. And _that_ led back to Daniela, and before he knew it he was talking out his earliest memories, of the old pink house and of realizing that his life was a bad one, and of the first really important person he could remember leaving him.

He wasn't sure when he'd started crying, but as he finished the story about Daniela, tears were running steadily down his face. Enjolras, he was dimly aware, was rubbing his shoulders, slow and steady; Combeferre had never taken his eyes off Feuilly's face through the whole story, except to remove his glasses and wipe his eyes every few minutes.

"And--and that's why it was so bad when I quit," Feuilly told them. "I _knew_ what I--what I was doing to them. I knew how much that can fuck up a kid's life. And I had kids on my caseload who--who had been abandoned, whose parents and grandparents had all died, who'd been shouted and and beaten and molested and had watched parents and caseworkers and foster parents walk out on them and _I knew what I was doing to them_. And I left anway."

He choked on a sob, but pushed on. "They needed me, but I was too fucked up to stick it out for them. And nothing's changed since then. I--I thought I could be better. But I'm just as useless as ever." His vision was completely blurry now, the apartment fading behind a screen of tears.

"It's pathetic--eight people in my class, and I c-can't even hold it together for them. I'm not better at all, I'm just as--as broken as I always was. I--I can't---I hate--" He gave up and put his head down on his knees, his whole body shuddering with heaving sobs.

There was an arm around his shoulders, a hand gripping his upper arm. It took him a minute to realize it, to recognize the quiet, steady sound in his ear as Enjolras's voice. His raised his head a few inches off his knees, and the little tug Enjolras gave his arm was all it took to send Feuilly collapsing against him, sobbing into his chest.

For several minutes, all Feuilly could do was cry, his hands clenched in the fabric of Enjolras's shirt. He was so thoroughly miserable he wasn't aware of anything but his choking sobs and the deep, sick feeling of failure.

Gradually, things filtered back to him. He became aware of Enjolras's hand carding through his hair. Of Combeferre's steady presence on his other side and his hand on Feuilly's back. Of the sound of Enjolras's voice, high with emotion, murmuring over his head words Feuilly wasn't hearing.

Then the apartment buzzer sounded.

"Shit, it's the takeout," Combeferre muttered, his voice sounding choked. The couch cushions shifted as Combeferre got up and walked over to the door to buzz the delivery person up. "Enj, do you have cash?"

Feuilly became acutely aware of how awkward the whole situation was, how loud his ugly, heaving sobs were in the quiet apartment. He tried to get ahold of himself, but he couldn't manage to stop crying. And when the knock came at the door, Enjolras's arms just tightened around him.

There were indistinct words that Feuilly couldn't catch, the rustle of a plastic bag, the door closing, and a minute later the cushions next to Feuilly sagged again as Combeferre sat down beside him.

It took a few more minutes to get himself under control, but finally Feuilly pushed away from Enjolras's chest, gulping and taking long, shudding breaths. Combeferre offered Feuilly the box of tissues and he blew his nose as Combeferre passed them on to Enjolras.

"Sorry," Feuilly croaked, blotting at his eyes with his sleeve.

"Hush," Combeferre said. "You don't have anything to apologize for." His arm went around Feuilly's shoulders and he pulled him into a sort of sideways hug.

Feuilly glanced over at Enjolras, and managed a smile at the enormous wet spot he'd left on his blue button-down. "I got you all wet," he said shakily.

Enjolras looked down at his shirt and a grin flickered across his face, but he quickly turned serious again, meeting Feuilly's gaze with red-rimmed eyes. "Really, Feuilly, it's okay to . . . to not be okay. I'm really glad you decided to talk to us."

Feuilly nodded, ducking his head as his cheeks grew hot. "Um. Can I use your bathroom? I want to wash my face."

He stood there for a long time with the hot water running over his hands, his eyes closed, trying to even out his breathing. He wasn't going to let himself think right now about what had just happened--how he'd just had a huge meltdown in front of the people whose opinion he cared most about in the world--or what it might mean for those friendships. And he wasn't going to think about the fact that falling apart like this meant that he'd failed once again, that he'd have to look for someone else to pass the ESL class off to because he couldn't keep his own shit together.

For right now, he would just focus on not crying anymore tonight.

When he came out of the bathroom, Enjolras and Combeferre were still sitting on the couch, talking in low, urgent tones. They looked up--in perfect unison--as Feuilly hesitantly came into the room, not really sure what was supposed to happen next.

Enjolras patted the cushions next to him. "C'mere." As Feuilly settled on the couch and took the glass of water Combeferre handed him, Enjolras folded his hands together, leaning forward seriously. "I want to make sure you really hear what I've been saying to you, because,"--a little smile twitched at his lips--"I think you were a little distracted the first ten times. And it's really important that you hear and believe this, so I'm going to tell you again, okay?"

"Uh, okay, yeah."

"You are _not_ a failure." Enjolras spoke slowly and firmly, his eyes fixed on Feuilly's. "You are not useless or pathetic or any of the other things you've said about yourself tonight. And you are _absolutely_ not irreparably broken."

Combeferre stepped in when Enjolras paused for breath. "The things that happened to you when you were younger--and even things that happened as recently as last year, or last week--do not define you. They may still affect you, of course, but they don't have to control you. You can move past them."

"And you already have," Enjolras said, unfolding his hands to gesture dramatically. "You've come _so far_ , Feuilly; with everything you've been through you'd have every right to be bitter and cynical, and to look out for nobody except yourself. But instead you're an incredibly generous, unselfish person."

To his dismay, Feuilly found his eyes welling up with tears again. "Guys," he protested weakly.

Enjolras ignored him. "I cannot _believe_ how hard you work, how much you give of yourself. You go from a job that overworked you and was stressful and upsetting and asked _way_ too much of you emotionally, so much so that you have to cut all ties with it and start over, and what do you do not two months afterward? You join an advocacy group. And then you take on an ESL class and not only teach your students English but also become their de facto social worker, helping them settle in in a city that _you're_ still learning your way around."

"You are doing an _amazing_ job with your class," Combeferre agreed. "You have gone over and beyond a hundred times to help your students, and you're working hard to be the best teacher you can. It's clear that you do care about them, very much, even if it is understandably exhausting."

"And with all of that, you still find time to attend ABC meetings and help out with our projects and suggest new ideas. Your input has been invaluable to our group, Feuilly; you have a unique perspective, and I think your influence has really changed our outlook, helped us find a balance between working for long-term systemic change and pursuing local, practical action to make a difference in the everyday realities of people in our community. And you--" Combeferre stopped Enjolras with a hand on his arm and a little half smile.

"The point _is_ ," Enjolras finished, "we both think you are amazing--and even more so now, knowing what you've gone through to get here--and we really want you to believe us when we tell you that you are wrong, you are _far_ from worthless."

Feuilly was mopping tears from his face again with his sodden shirt sleeve, gulping and trying desperately not to completely break down again. "Thank you," he whispered.

"We also think you are working too hard and trying to do too much," Combeferre added, his tone matter-of-fact. "And we have some ideas for people who may be able to help out, and I'm sure Courfeyrac has connections, too--but unless you really want to get into that right now, maybe we can talk about that stuff tomorrow?"

Feuilly nodded. "Yeah," he managed. "That sounds good."

"And now, I'd recommend a warm beverage," Combeferre said, smiling. "We have tea and hot chocolate--and also coffee, but no decaf, unfortunately." As if on cue, Enjolras's stomach rumbled loudly. "And also Thai food."

"Sorry--" Feuilly began, stopping quickly at twin glares from Enjolras and Combeferre.

"Do you need another lecture about how very much you do _not_ have to apologize for any of this?" Enjolras asked, mock serious.

"No, sor--" A wobbly smile tugged at his lips. "No."

Enjolras grabbed Feuilly's hands and pulled him up. "Then let's go have some dinner."

 

* * *

 

He slept on their couch that night. After a cup of hot chocolate and some delicious pad thai and an episode of Mythbusters that had Combeferre incoherent with indignation at the ridiculous lengths the scenario was taken to (and had Enjolras in stitches laughing at him), Feuilly felt a lot more like himself. But he was still a little shaken up by the last six hours, and more than a little reluctant to be alone, and when Enjolras sleepily offered their couch for the night, Feuilly shyly accepted the offer.

Over breakfast the next morning (Combeferre sitting down calmly to coffee and granola and half a grapefruit; Enjolras snatching bites from a piece of peanut butter toast as he dashed in and out, collecting papers, packing lunch, and hunting down lost shoes and headphones and folders), Feuilly brought up the subject of his replacement.

Combeferre blinked at him, then took another big, deliberate gulp of his coffee, as if to bolster his comprehension. "What do you mean?"

"Last night, you said you had people in mind who might be able to take over. The ESL class, I mean."

"I was thinking of people who could assist, mainly with the social services part of it," Combeferre said slowly. "I hadn't thought about someone to take over the class entirely. Do you want to stop teaching?"

"I mean, I have to, don't I?" Feuilly stirred his granola, avoiding Combeferre's eyes. "You have to have your own shit together before you can help other people--and I obviously don't."

"That's not true," Enjolras looked up from cleaning up the coffee he'd just spilled all over the countertop.

Feuilly sighed. "Look, Enjolras, it's really nice of you to say that, and I _do_ appreciate the thought, but I'm not blind; I'm aware that I'm not at all--"

"That's not what I mean," Enjolras interrupted. "Sure, you have issues; we all do. But it's not true that you have to have everything in your life worked out before you can help anyone else. If that were the case, nobody would ever do anything to make the world a better place."

"Everyone has to rely on other people," Combeferre added. "Enjolras and I rely on each other."

"--and on Courfeyrac," Enjolras put in, "and he relies on us."

"Obviously, it's important to take care of yourself, too, and to have an identity apart from other people, and all that. But it's okay to need other people." Combeferre started methodically cutting around the sections of his grapefruit. "So as I see it, the question is still, 'Do you _want_ to keep teaching?'"

Feuilly thought for a long time. He didn't want to keep feeling as stressed as he had the past few weeks. But--and he thought about Saahid's eager attempts at jokes, Mako's rare smiles, Mohammud's dogged, patient practice of the same basic forms--he didn't want to leave his students, either. "I want . . ." he said slowly, "I want to stay involved with my students, in some capacity--teaching or something else. But I don't want to be the only person responsible for them. It's requiring a lot of knowledge that I just don't have, and I'm always afraid that I'm overlooking something important." He took a bite of granola and chewed meditatively. "I guess what I would like is to get them working with an agency--maybe Catholic Family Services again, or maybe there's somebody else in the area that they'd be more comfortable with."

"Maybe you should look for a job in refugee resettlement," Enjolras suggested, sweeping back into the kitchen (in a coat and scarf but no shoes) to tumble his lunch into his bag. "You'd have more resources and support, and you'd be working as a member of a team. You wouldn't have to navigate everything by yourself. It's just an idea."

Feuilly nodded. "It's a good idea." His students might be more willing to work with the Catholic group if Feuilly were there. He'd shut the door on ever working in social work again a year ago, but between them, Enjolras and Combeferre were starting to convince him that he might have made the decision too hastily.

"Or you could continue helping this family unofficially, but let someone else teach them English," Combeferre said. "There are lots of classes in the city; I'm sure there's something out there that would fit their schedules and their needs." He got up to put his dishes in the sink, handing Enjolras the travel mug he'd been searching haphazardly for. "Think about it."

"Okay," Feuilly agreed, feeling a lightness in his chest he hadn't realized had been missing all this time. He had options--and he had someone to go to if they all fell through. For the first time in a very long while, the future seemed full of possibilities instead of threats, and Feuilly was breathing easier than he had in months. "I will."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it! Thank you so much to everyone who read and liked and reblogged and everything. Every one of the comments on this story made me so happy! This story means a lot to me, and I'm really glad it meant something to some other people too. <3
> 
> By the way, if you'd like to find me on tumblr, I am takethewatch. I would love to talk to you there!


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